.NRLF 


A 


RARY 

'eRSWTT  OF 
1.1F0«N1A 


NOT  E-B  O  O  K 

of 

ANTON     CHEKHOV 


NOTE-BOOK  OF  ANTON  CHEKHOV 

Translated  by 

S.     S.     KOTELIANSKY 

and 

LEONARD    WOOLF 


NEW  YORK   B.  W.  HUEBSCH,  Inc.    mcmxxii 


COPYRIGHT,  1921,  BY 
B.  W.  HUEBSCH,   Inc. 

Published  November,  1921 
Second  printing  April,  1922 


yOAN  STACK 


PBIKTSD  IN  THB  UNITSD  STATES  OT  AMBSIOA 


PS 


This  volume  consists  of  notes,  themes,  and 
sketches  for  works  which  Anton  Chekhov 
intended  to  write,  and  are  characteristic  of 
the  methods  of  his  artistic  production. 
Among  his  papers  was  found  a  series  of 
sheets  in  a  special  cover  with  the  inscrip- 
tion: "Themes,  thoughts,  notes,  and  frag- 
ments." Madame  L.  O.  Knipper-Chekhov, 
Chekhov's  wife,  also  possesses  his  note-book, 
in  which  he  entered  separate  themes  for  his 
future  work,  quotations  which  he  liked,  etc. 
If  he  used  any  material,  he  used  to  strike  it 
out  in  the  note-book.  The  significance 
which  Chekhov  attributed  to  this  material 
may  be  judged  from  the  fact  that  he  re- 
copied  most  of  it  into  a  special  copy  book. 


843 


ANTON  CHEKHOV'S  DIARY.. 

1896 


My  neighbor  V.  N.  S.  told  me  that  his  uncle 
Fet-Shenshin,  the  famous  poet,  when  driving 
through  the  Mokhovaia  Street,  would  in- 
variably let  down  the  window  of  his  carriage 
and  spit  at  the  University.  He  would  ex- 
pectorate and  spit:  Bah!  His  coachman 
got  so  used  to  this  that  every  time  he  drove 
past  the  University,  he  would  stop. 

In  January  I  was  in  Petersburg  and  stayed 
with  Souvorin.  I  often  saw  Potapenko. 
Met  Korolenko.  I  often  went  to  the 
Maly  Theatre.  As  Alexander  [Chekhov's 
brother]  came  downstairs  one  day,  B.  V.  G. 
simultaneously  came  out  of  the  editorial  of- 
fice of  the  Novoye  Vretnya  and  said  to  me  in- 
dignantly: "Why  do  you  set  the  old  man 
(i.  e.  Souvorin)  against  Burenin*?"  I  have 
never  spoken  ill  of  the  contributors  to  the 
Novoye  Vretnya  in  Souvorin's  presence, 
although  I  have  the  deepest  disrespect  for  the 
majority  of  them. 

In  February,  passing  through  Moscow,  I 
went  to  see  L.  N.  Tolstoi.     He  was  irri- 

[1] 


tated,  made  stinging  remarks  about  the  de- 
cadents^ and  for  an  hour  and  a  half  argued 
with  B.  Tchitcherin,  who,  I  thought,  talked 
nonsense  all  the  time.  Tatyana  and  Mary 
[Tolstoi's  daughters]  laid  out  a  patience; 
they  both  wished,  and  asked  me  to  pick  a 
card  out;  I  picked  out  the  ace  of  spades  sep- 
arately for  each  of  them,  and  that  annoyed 
them.  By  accident  there  were  two  aces  of 
spades  in  the  pack.  Both  of  them  are  ex- 
traordinarily sympathetic,  and  their  attitude 
to  their  father  is  touching.  The  countess 
denounced  the  painter  Ge  all  the  evening. 
She  too  was  irritated. 

May  5.  The  sexton  Ivan  Nicolayevitch 
brought  my  portrait,  which  he  has  painted 
from  a  photograph.  In  the  evening  V.  N.  S. 
brought  his  friend  N.  He  is  director  of  the 
Foreign  Department.  .  .  editor  of  a  mag- 
azine. .  .  and  dioctor  df  medicine.  He 
gives  the  impression  of  being  an  unusually 
stupid  person  and  a  reptile.  He  said: 
"There's  nothing  more  pernicious  on  earth 
than  a  rascally  liberal  paper,"  and  told  us 
that,  apparently,  the  peasants  whom  he  doc- 
tors, having  got  his  advice  and  medicine  free 
of  charge,  ask  him  for  a  tip.     He  and  S. 

[2] 


speak  of  the  peasants  with  exasperation  and 
loathing. 

June  1 .  I  was  at  the  Vagankov  Cemetery 
and  saw  the  graves  there  of  the  victims  of  the 
Khodinka.  [During  the  coronation  of 
Nicholas  II  in  Moscow  hundreds  of  people 
were  crushed  to  death  in  the  Khodinka 
Fields.]  I.  Pavlovsky,  the  Paris  corre- 
spondent of  the  Novoye  Vremya^  came  with 
me  to  Melikhovo. 

August  4.  Opening  of  the  school  in  Ta- 
lezh.  The  peasants  of  Talezh,  Bershov, 
Doubechnia  and  Sholkovo  presented  me 
with  four  loaves,  an  icon  and  two  silver  salt- 
cellars. The  Sholkovo  peasant  Postnov 
made  a  speech. 

N.  stayed  with  me  from  the  15th  to  the 
18th  August.  He  has  been  forbidden  [by 
the  authorities]  to  publish  anything:  he 
speaks  contemptuously  now  of  the  younger 
G.,  who  said  to  the  new  Chief  of  the  Central 
Press  Bureau  that  he  was  not  going  to  sacri- 
fice his  weekly  Nedelya  for  N.'s  sake  and 
that  *'We  have  always  anticipated  the  wishes 
of  the  Censorship."  In  fine  weather  N, 
walks  in  goloshes,  and  carries  an  umbrella,  so 
as  not  to  die  of  sunstroke;  he  is  afraid  to 
[31 


wash  in  cold  water,  and  complains  of  palpi- 
tations of  the  heart.  From  me  he  went  on  to 
L.  N.  Tolstoi. 

1  left  Taganrog  on  August  24.  In  Rostov 
I  had  supper  with  a  school-friend,  L.  Volken- 
stein,  the  barrister,  who  has  already  a  house 
in  town  and  a  villa  in  Kislovodsk  [in  the 
Caucasus] .  I  was  in  Nakhichevan — what  a 
change!  All  the  streets  are  lit  by  electric 
light.  In  Kislovodsk,  at  the  funeral  of  Gen- 
eral Safonov,  I  met  A.  I.  Tchouprov  [a  fa- 
mous economist],  later  I  met  A.  N.  Vessel- 
ovsky  [litterateur]  in  the  park.  On  the 
28th  I  went  on  a  hunting  party  with  Baron 
Steingel,  passed  the  night  in  Bermamut.  It 
was  cold  with  a  violent  wind. 

2  September  in  Novorissisk.  Steamer 
Alexander  11.  On  the  3rd  I  arrived  at 
Feodossia  ^and  stoppefd  with  Souvorin.  I 
saw  I.  K.  Aivasovsky  [famous  painter]  who 
said  to  me :  "You  no  longer  come  to  see  me, 
an  old  man."  In  his  opinion  I  ought  to  have 
paid  him  a  visit.  On  the  16th  in  Kharkov, 
I  was  in  the  theatre  at  the  performance  of 
"The  Dangers  of  Intelligence."  17th  at 
home:  wonderful  weather. 

Vladimir  Sloviov   [famous  philosopher] 

[4] 


told  me  that  he  always  carried  an  oak-gall  in 
his  trouser  pocket, — in  his  opinion,  it  is  a 
radical  cure  for  piles. 

October  17.  Performance  of  my  "Sea- 
gull" at  the  Alexandrinsky  Theatre.  It  was 
not  a  success. 

29th.  I  was  at  a  meeting  of  the  Zemstvo 
Council  at  Sezpukhovo. 

On  the  10th  November  I  had  a  letter  fr-om 
A.  F.  Koni  who  says  he  liked  my  "Seagull" 
very  much. 

November  26th.  A  fire  broke  out  in  our 
house.  Count  S.  I.  Shakhovsky  helped  to 
put  it  out.  When  it  was  over,  Sh.  related 
that  once,  when  a  fire  broke  out  in  his  house 
at  night,  he  lifted  a  tank  of  water  weighing 
4^  cwt.  and  poured  the  water  on  the  flames. 

December  4.  For  the  performance  [of 
the  '"Seagull"]  on  the  17th  October  see 
"Theatral,"  No.  95,  page  75.  It  is  true 
that  I  fled  from  the  theatre,  but  only  when 
the  play  was  over.  In  L.'s  dressing-room 
during  two  or  three  acts.  During  the  inter- 
vals there  came  to  her  officials  of  the  State 
Theatres  in  uniform,  wearing  their  orders,  P. 
— with  a  Star;  a  handsome  young  official  of 
the  Department  of  the  State  Police  also  came 

[5] 


to  her.  If  a  man  takes  up  work  which  is 
alien  to  him,  art  for  instance,  then,  since  it 
is  impossible  for  him  to  become  an  artist,  he 
becomes  an  official.  What  a  lot  of  people 
thus  play  the  parasite  round  science,  the  the- 
atre, the  painting, — ^by  putting  on  a  uni- 
form! Likewise  the  man  to  whom  life  is 
alien,  who  is  incapable  of  living,  nothing  else 
remains  for  him,  but  to  become  an  official. 
The  fat  actresses,  who  were  in  the  dressing- 
room,  made  themselves  pleasant  to  the 
officials — respectfully  and  flatteringly.  (L. 
expressed  her  delight  that  P.,  so  young,  had 
already  got  the  Star.)  They  were  old,  re- 
spectable house-keepers,  serf-women,  whom 
the  masters  honored  with  their  presence. 

December  21.  Levitan  suffers  from  dila- 
tion of  the  aorta.  He  carries  clay  on  his 
dhest.  He  has  superb  studies  for  pictures, 
and  a  passionate  thirst  for  life. 

December  31.  P.  I.  Seryogin,  the  land- 
scape painter,  came. 

1897. 
From  January  10  to  February  3  busy  with 
the  census.     I  am  enumerator  of  the  16th 
district,  and  have  to  instruct  the  other  (fif- 


[6] 


teen)  enumerators  of  our  Bavykin  Section. 
They  all  work  superbly,  except  the  priest  of 
the  Starospassky  parish  and  the  Government 
oiBcial,  appointed  to  the  Zemstvo,  G.,  (who 
is  in  charge  of  the  census  district)  ;  he  is  away 
nearly  all  the  time  in  Serpukhovo,  spends 
every  evening  at  the  Club  and  keeps  on 
wiring  that  he  is  not  well.  All  the  rest  of 
the  Government  officials  of  our  district  arc 
also  said  to  do  nothing. 

With  such  critics  as  we  have,  authors  like 
N.  S.  Lyeskov  and  S.  V.  Maximov  cannot  be 
a  success. 

Between  "there  is  a  God'*  and  ''there  is  no 
God"  lies  a  whole  vast  tract,  which  the 
really  wise  man  crosses  with  great  effort.  A 
Russian  knows  one  or  other  of  these  two 
extremes,  and  the  middle  tract  between  them 
does  not  interest  him;  and  therefore  he  usu- 
ally knows  nothing,  or  very  little. 

The  ease  with  which  Jews  change  their 
religion  is  justified  by  many  on  the  ground  of 
indifference.  But  this  is  not  a  justification. 
One  has  to  respect  even  one's  indifference, 
and  not  change  it  for  anything,  since  indif- 
ference in  a  decent  man  is  also  a  religion. 


[7] 


February  13.  Dinner  at  Mme.  Moros- 
ov's.  Tchouprov,  Sololevsky,  Blaramberg, 
Sablin  and  myself  were  present. 

February  15.  Pancakes  at  Soldatien- 
kov's  [a  Moscow  publisher].  Only  Golziev 
[editor  of  Russian  Thought]  and  myself 
were  present.  Many  fine  pictures,  nearly 
all  badly  hung.  After  the  pancakes  we 
drove  to  Levitan,  from  whom  Soldatienkov 
bought  a  picture  and  two  studies  for  1,100 
roubles.  Met  Polyenov  [famous  painter]. 
In  the  evening  I  was  at  professor  Ostrou- 
mov's;  he  says  that  Levitan  "can't  help 
dying."  O.  himself  is  ill  and  obviously 
frightened. 

February  16.  Several  of  us  met  in  the  ev- 
ening in  the  offices  of  Russian  Thought  to 
discuss  the  People's  Theatre.  Every  bne 
liked  Shekhtel's  plan. 

February  19.  Dinner  at  the  "Continen- 
tal" to  commemorate  the  great  reform  [the 
abolition  of  the  serfdom  in  1861].  Tedious 
and  incongruous.  To  dine,  drink  cham- 
pagne, make  a  racket,  and  deliver  speeches 
about  national  consciousness,  the  conscience 
of  the  people,  freedom,  and  such  things,  while 
slaves  in  tail-coats  are  running  round  your 
[8] 


tables,  veritable  serfs,  and  your  coachmen 
wait  outside  in  the  street,  in  the  bitter  cold — 
that  is  lying  to  the  Holy  Ghost. 

February  22.  I  went  to  Serpukhovo  to 
an  amateur  performance  in  aid  of  the  school 
at  Novossiolki.  As  far  as  Zarizin  I  was  ac- 
companied by.  .  .  a  little  queen  in  exile, — 
an  actress  who  imagines  herself  great ;  unedu- 
cated and  a  bit  vulgar. 

From  March  25  till  April  10  I  was  laid 
up  in  Ostroumov's  clinic.  Haemorrhage. 
Creaking,  moisture  in  the  apices  of  both  my 
lungs;  congestion  in  the  apex  of  the  right. 
On  March  28  L.  N.  Tolstoi  came  to  see  me. 
We  spoke  of  immortality.  I  told  him  the 
gist  of  Nossilov's  story  "The  Theatre  of  the 
Voguls,"  and  he  evidently  listened  with 
great  pleasure. 

May  1.  N.  arrived.  He  is  always 
thanking  you  for  tea  and  dinner,  apologizing, 
afraid  of  being  late  for  the  train;  he  talks  a 
great  deal,  keeps  mentioning  his  wife,  like 
Gogol's  Mijniev,  pushes  the  proofs  of  his 
play  over  to  you,  first  one  sheet  then  another, 
giggles,  attacks  Menshikov,  whom  Tolstoi 
has  "swallowed" ;  assures  you  that  he  would 
shoot  Stassiulevitch,   if  the  latter  were  to 

[9] 


show  himself  at  a  review,  as  President  of  the 
Russian  Republic;  giggles  again,  wets  his 
mustaches  with  the  soup,  eats  hardly  any- 
thing, and  yet  is  quite  a  nice  man  after  all. 

May  4.  The  monks  from  the  monastery 
paid  us  a  visit.  Dasha  Moussin-Poushkin, 
the  wife  of  the  engineer  Gliebov,  who  has 
been  killed  hunting,  was  there.  She  sang  a 
great  deal. 

May  24.  I  was  present  at  the  examina- 
tion of  two  schools  in  Tchirkov.  [The 
Tchirkov  and  Mikhailovo  schools.] 

July  13.  Opening  of  the  school  at 
Novossiolki  which  I  have  had  built.  The 
peasants  gave  me  an  icon  with  an  inscription. 
The  Zemstvo  people  were  absent. 

Braz  [painter]  does  my  portrait  (for  the 
Tretiakov  Gallery).     Two  sittings  a  day. 

July  22.  I  received  a  medal  for  my  work 
on  the  census. 

July  23.  In  Petersburg.  Stopped  at 
Souvorin's,  in  the  drawing-room.  Met  VI. 
T.  .  .  .  who  complained  of  his  hysteria 
and  praised  his  own  books.  I  saw  P. 
Gnyeditch  and  E.  Karpov,  who  imitated 
Leykin  showing  off  as  a  Spanish  grandee. 

July  27.  At  Leykin's  at  Ivanovsk.  28th 
tio] 


in  Moscow.     In  the  editorial  offices  of  Rus- 
sian Thought,  bugs  in  the  sofa. 

September  4.  Arrived  in  Paris.  "Mou- 
lin Rouge,"  danse  du  ventre,  Cafe  du  Neon 
with  Coffins,  Cafe  du  Ciel,  etc. 

September  8.  In  Biarritz.  V.  M.  Sobo- 
levsky  and  Mme.  V.  A.  Morosov  are  here. 
Every  Russian  in  Biarritz  complains  of  the 
number  of  Russians  here. 

September  14.  Bayonne.  Grande  course 
landoise.     Bull-fight. 

September  22.  From  Biarritz  to  Nice 
via  Toulouse. 

September  23.  Nice.  I  settled  into  the 
Pension  Russe.  Met  Maxim  Kovalevsky; 
lunched  at  his  house  at  Beaulieu,  with  N.  I. 
Yurassov  and  Yakobi,  the  artist.  In  Monte 
Carlo. 

October  7.     Confession  of  a  spy. 

October  9.  I  saw  B.'s  mother  playing 
roulette.     Unpleasant  sight. 

November    15.     Monte    Carlo.     I    saw 
how  the  croupier  stole  a  louis  d'or. 
1898. 

April  16.  In  Paris.  Acquaintance  with 
M.  M.  Antokolsky  [sculptor]  and  negotia- 
tions for  a  statue  of  Peter  the  Great. 

[11] 


May  5.     Returned  home. 

May  26.  Sobolevsky  came  to  Melikhovo. 
Must  put  down  the  fact  that,  in  Paris,  in 
spite  of  the  rain  and  cold,  I  spent  two  or 
three  weeks  without  being  bored.  Arrived 
here  with  M.  Kovalevsky.  Many  interest- 
ing acquaintances:  Paul  Boyer,  Art  Roe, 
Bonnie,  M.  Dreyfus,  De  Roberti,  Waliczew- 
sky,  Onieguin.  Luncheons  and  dinners,  at 
I.  I.  Schoukin's  house.  Left  by  Nord-ex- 
press  for  Petersburg,  whence  to  Moscow. 
At  home,  found  wonderful  weather. 

An  example  of  clerical  boorishness.     At  a 

dinner  party  the  critic  Protopopov  came  up  to 

M.  Kovalevsky,  clinked  glasses  and  said :    "I 

drink  to  science,  so  long  as  it  does  no  harm 

to  the  people." 

1901. 

September  12.     I  was  at  L.  Tolstoi's. 

December  7.     Talked  to  L.  Tolstoi  over 

the  telephone. 

1903. 

January  8.  "Istorichesky  Vestnik,"  Nov- 
ember 1902,  "The  Artistic  Life  of  Moscow 
in  the  Seventies,"  by  I.  N.  Zakharin.  It  is 
said  in  that  article  that  I  sent  in  my  "Three 
Sisters"  to  the  Theatrical  and  Literary  Com- 
mittee.    It  is  not  true. 

[12] 


I 


ANTON  CHEKHOV'S  NOTE-BOOKS 

(1892-1904) 


Mankind  has  conceived  history  as  a  series 
.of  battles ;  hitherto  it  has  considered  fighting 
as  the  main  thing  in  life. 

Solomon  made  a  great  mistake  when  he 
asked  for  wisdom.^ 

1  Among  Chekhov's  papers  the  following  monologue  was 
found,  written  in  his  own  hand: 

Solomon    (alone):  Oh!   how   dark  is  life!     No  night, 
when  I  was  a  child,  so  terrified  me  by  its  darkness  as 
does  my  invisible  existence.     Lord,  to  David  my  father 
thou   gavest   only  the   gift  of  harmonizing      words   and 
sounds,    to   sing    and    praise  thee   on   strings,   to   lament 
sweetly,  to  make  people  weep  or  admire  beauty;  but  why 
hast  thou  given  me  a  meditative,  sleepless,  hungry  mind? 
Like  an  insect  born  of  the  dust,  I  hide  in  darkness;  and 
in  fear  and  despair,  all  shaking  and  shivering,  I  see  and 
hear  in  everything  an  invisible  mystery.     Why  this  morn- 
ing?    Why  does  the  sun  come  out  from  behind  the  temple 
and  gild   the  palm  tree?     Why  this  beauty  of  women? 
Where  does  the  bird  hurry,  what  is  the  meaning  of  its 
flight,   if   it    and    its  young    and    the   place   to   which   it 
hastens  will,  like  myself,  turn  to  dust?     It  were  better  I 
had  never  been  born  or  were  a  stone,  to  which  God  has 
given  neither  eyes  nor  thoughts.     In  order  to  tire  out  my 
body  by  nightfall,  all  day  yesterday,  like  a  mere  workman 
I  carried  marble  to  the  temple;  but  now  the  night  has 
come    and    I    cannot    sleep  .  .  .  I'll    go    and    lie    down. 
Phorses  told  me  that  if  one   imagines   a   flock  of  sheep 
running  and  fixes  one's  attention  upon  it,  the  mind  gets 
confused   and  one  falls  asleep.    I'll  do  it.  .  .  (exit). 

[15] 


Ordinary  hypocrites  pretend  to  be  doves; 
political  and  literary  hypocrites  pretend  to 
be  eagles.  But  don't  be  disconcerted  by 
their  aquiline  appearance.  They  are  not 
eagles,  but  rats  or  dogs. 

Those  who  are  more  stupid  and  more  dirty 
than  we  are  called  the  people.  The  admin- 
istration classifies  the  population  into  tax- 
payers and  non-taxpayers.  But  neither 
classification  will  do;  we  are  all  the  people 
and  all  the  best  we  are  doing  is  the  people's 
work. 

If  the  Prince  of  Monaco  has  a  roulette 
table,  surely  convicts  may  play  at  cards. 

Iv.  (Chekhov's  brother  Ivan)  could  phil- 
osophize about  love,  but  he  could  not  love. 

Aliosha:  "My  mind,  mother,  is  weakened 
by  illness  and  I  am  now  like  a  child:  now  I 
pray  to  God,  now  I  cry,  now  I  am  happy." 

Why  did  Hamlet  trouble  about  ghosts 
after  death,  when  life  itself  is  haunted  by 
ghosts  so  much  more  terrible? 

[16] 


Daughter:  "Felt  boots  are  not  the  correct 
thing." 

Father:  "Yes  they  are  clumsy,  I'll  have 
to  get  leather  ones."  The  father  fell  ill 
and  his  deportation  to  Siberia  was  post- 
poned. 

Daughter:  "You  are  not  at  all  ill,  father. 
Look,  you  have  your  coat  and  boots 
on.  .  .  r 

Father:  "I  long  to  be  exiled  to  Siberia.  One 
could  sit  somewhere  by  the  Yenissey  or  Obi 
river  and  fish,  and  on  the  ferry  there  would 
be  nice  little  convicts,  emigrants.  .  .  .  Here 
I  hate  everything:  this  lilac  tree  in  front  of 
the  window,  these  gravel  paths.  .  .  ." 

A  bedroom.  The  light  of  the  moon  shines 
so  brightly  through  the  window  that  even  the 
buttons  on  his  night  shirt  are  visible. 

A  nice  man  would  feel  ashamed  even  be- 
fore a  dog.  .  .  . 

A  certain  Councillor  of  State,  looking  at 
a  beautiful  landscape,  said:  "What  a  mar- 
velous function  of  nature!"  From  the 
note-book  of  an  old  dog:    "People  don't  eat 

[17] 


slops  and  bones  which  the  cooks  throw  away. 
Fools  I" 

He  had  nothing  in  his  soul  except  recol- 
lections of  his  schooldays. 

The  French  say:  "Laid  comme  un  che- 
nille"— as  ugly  as  a  caterpillar. 

People  are  bachelors  or  old  maids  because 
they  rouse  no  interest,  not  even  a  physical 
one. 

The  children  growing  up  talked  at  meals 
about  religion  and  laughed  at  fasts,  monks, 
etc.  The  old  mother  at  first  lost  her  temper, 
then,  evidently  getting  used  to  it,  only 
smiled,  but  at  last  she  told  the  children  that 
they  had  convinced  her,  that  she  is  now  of 
their  opinion.  The  children  felt  awkward 
and  could  not  imagine  what  their  old  mother 
would  do  without  her  religion. 

There  is  no  national  science,  just  as  there 
is  no  national  multiplication  table;  what  is 
national  is  no  longer  science. 

[18] 


The  dog  walked  in  the  street  and  was 
ashamed  of  its  crooked  legs. 

The  difference  between  man  and  woman: 
a  woman,  as  she  grows  old  gives  herself  up 
more  and  more  to  female  affairs;  a  man,  as 
he  grows  old,  withdraws  himself  more  and 
more  from  female  affairs. 

That  sudden  and  ill-timed  love-affair  may- 
be compared  to  this:  you  take  boys  some- 
where for  a  walk;  the  walk  is  jolly  and  inter- 
esting— and  suddenly  one  of  them  gorges 
himself  with  oil  paint. 

The  character  in  the  play  says  to  every 
one:  "You've  got  worms."  He  cures  his 
daughter  of  the  worms,  and  she  turns  yellow. 

A  scholar,  without  talent,  a  blockhead, 
worked  for  twenty-four  years  and  produced 
nothing  good,  gave  the  world  only  scholars 
as  untalented  and  as  narrow-minded  as  him- 
self. At  night  he  secretly  bound  books — 
that  was  his  true  vocation :  in  that  he  was  an 
artist  and  felt  the  joy  of  it.     There  came  to 

[19] 


him  a  bookbinder,  who  loved  learning  and 
studied  secretly  at  night. 

But  perhaps  the  universe  is  suspended  on 
the  tooth  of  some  monster. 

Keep  to  the  right,  you  of  the  yellow  eye ! 

Do  you  want  to  eat? 
No,  on  the  contrary. 

A  pregnant  woman  with  short  arms  and 
a  long  neck,  like  a  kangaroo. 

How  pleasant  it  is  to  respect  people! 
When  I  see  books,  I  am  not  concerned  with 
how  the  authors  loved  or  played  cards ;  I  see 
only  their  marvelous  works. 

To  demand  that  the  woman  one  loves 
should  be  pure  is  egotistical :  to  look  for  that 
in  a  woman  which  I  have  not  got  myself  is 
not  love,  but  worship,  since  one  ought  to 
love  one's  equals. 

The  so-called  pure  childlike  joy  of  life  is 
animal  joy. 

[20] 


I  cannot  bear  the  crying  of  children,  but 
when  my  child  cries,  I  don't  hear. 

A  schoolboy  treats  a  lady  to  dinner  in  a 
restaurant.  He  has  only  one  rouble,  twenty 
kopecks.  The  bill  comes  to  four  raubles 
thirty  kopecks.  He  has  no  money  and  be- 
gins to  cry.  The  proprietor  boxes  his  ears. 
He  was  talking  to  the  lady  about  Abys- 
sinia. 

A  man,  who,  to  judge  from  his  appearance, 
loves  nothing  but  sausages  and  sauerkraut. 

We  judge  human  activities  by  their  goal; 
that  activity  is  great  of  which  the  goal  is 
great. 

You  drive  on  the  Nevski,  you  look  to  the 
left  on  the  Haymarket;  the  clouds  are  the 
color  of  smoke,  the  ball  of  the  setting  sun 
purple — Dante's  hell ! 

His  income  is  twenty-five  to  fifty  thou- 
sand, and  yet  out  of  poverty  he  shoots  him- 
self. 

[21] 


Terrible  poverty,  desperate  situation. 
The  mother  a  widow,  her  daughter  a  very 
ugly  girl.  At  last  the  mother  takes  courage 
and  advises  the  daughter  to  go  on  the  streets. 
She  herself  when  young  went  on  the  streets 
without  her  husband's  knowledge  in  order  to 
get  money  for  her  dresses;  she  has  some  ex- 
perience. She  instructs  her  daughter.  The 
latter  goes  out,  walks  all  night;  not  a  single 
man  takes  her;  she  is  ugly.  A  couple  of 
days  later,  three  young  rascals  on  the  boule- 
vard take  her.  She  brought  home  a  note 
which  turned  out  to  be  a  lottery  ticket  no 
longer  valid. 

Two  wives:  one  in  Petersburg,  the  other 
in  Kertch.  Constant  rows,  threats,  tele- 
grams. They  nearly  reduce  him  to  suicide. 
At  last  he  finds  a  way:  he  settles  them  both 
in  the  same  house.  They  are  perplexed,  pet- 
rified; they  grow  silent  and  quiet  down. 

His  character  is  so  undeveloped  that  one 
can  hardly  believe  that  he  has  been  to  the 
University. 

And  I  dreamt  that,  as  it  were,  what  I  con- 
[22] 


sidered  reality  was  a  dream,  and  the  dream 
was  reality. 

I  observed  that  after  marriage  people 
cease  to  be  curious. 

It  usually  takes  as  much  time  to  feel  happy 
as  to  wind  up  one's  watch. 

A  dirty  tavern  near  the  station.  And  in 
every  tavern  like  that  you  will  find  salted 
white  sturgeon  with  horse  radish.  What  a 
lot  of  sturgeon  must  be  salted  in  Russia ! 

Z.  goes  on  Sundays  to  the  Sukharevka  (a 

market-place  in  Moscow)  to  look  for  books; 

he  finds  a  book,  written  by  his  father,  with 

the  inscription :  "To  darling  Nadya  from  the 

author." 

A  Government  ofBcial  wears  on  his  chest 
the  portrait  of  the  Governor's  wife;  he  feeds 
a  turkey  on  nuts  and  makes  her  a  present  of 
it. 

One  should  be  mentally  clear,  morally 
pure,  and  physically  tidy. 

[23] 


It  was  said  of  a  certain  lady  that  she  had 
a  cat's  factory;  her  lover  tortured  the  cats  by 
treading  on  their  tails. 

An  officer  and  his  wife  went  to  the  baths 
together,  and  both  were  bathed  by  the  or- 
derly, whom  they  evidently  did  not  consider 
a  man. 

"And  now  he  appeared  with  all  his  deco- 
rations." 

"And  what  decorations  has  he  got?" 
"He  has  a  bronze  medal  for  the  census  of 
1897." 

A  government  clerk  gave  his  son  a  thrash- 
ing because  he  had  only  obtained  five  marks 
in  all  his  subjects  at  school.  It  seemed  to 
him  not  good  enough.  When  he  was  told 
that  he  was  in  the  wrong,  that  five  is  the 
highest  mark  obtainable,  he  thrashed  his  son 
again — out  of  vexation  with  himself. 

A  very  good  man  has  such  a  face  that  peo- 
ple take  him  for  a  detective;  he  is  suspected 
of  having  stolen  shirt-studs. 

[24] 


A  serious  phlegmatic  doctor  fell  in  love 
with  a  girl  who  danced  very  well,  and,  to 
please  her,  he  started  to  learn  a  mazurka. 

The  hen  sparrow  believes  that  her  cock 
sparrow  is  not  chirping  but  singing  beauti- 
fully. 

When  one  is  peacefully  at  home,  life 
seems  ordinary,  but  as  soon  as  one  walks 
into  the  street  and  begins  to  observe,  to  ques- 
tion women,  for  instance,  then  life  becomes 
terrible.  The  neighborhood  of  Patriarshi 
Prudy  (a  park  and  street  in  Moscow)  looks 
quiet  and  peaceful,  but  in  reality  life  there 
is  hell. 

These  red-faced  young  and  old  women  are 
so  healthy  that  steam  seems  to  exhale  from 
them. 

The  estate  will  soon  be  brought  under  the 
hammer;  there  is  poverty  all  round;  and  the 
footmen  are  still  dressed  like  jesters. 

There  has  been  an  increase  not  in  the  num- 

[25] 


ber  of  nervous  diseases  and  nervous  patients, 
but  in  the  number  of  doctors  able  to  study 
those  diseases. 


f 


The  more  refined  the  more  unhappy. 


j  Life  does  not  agree  with  philosophy :  there 
is  no  happiness  which  is  not  idleness  and  only 
the  useless  is  pleasurable. 

The  grandfather  is  given  fish  to  eat,  and  if 
it  does  not  poison  him  and  he  remains  alive, 
then  all  the  family  eat  it. 

A  correspondence.  A  young  man  dreams 
of  devoting  himself  to  literature  and  con- 
stantly writes  to  his  father  about  it;  at  last 
he  gives  up  the  civil  service,  goes  to  Peters- 
burg, and  devotes  himself  to  literature — ^he 
becomes  a  censor. 

First  class  sleeping  car.  Passengers  num- 
bers 6,  7,  8  and  9.  They  discuss  daughters- 
in-law.  Simple  people  suffer  from  mothers- 
in-law,  intellectuals  from  daughters-in-law. 

"My  elder  son's  wife  is  educated,  arranges 
Sunday  schools  and  libraries,  but  she  is  tact- 

[26] 


less,  cruel,  capricious,  and  physically  revolt- 
ing. At  dinner  she  will  suddenly  go  off  into 
sham  hysterics  because  of  some  article  in  the 
newspaper.  An  affected  thing."  Another 
daughter-in-law:  "In  society  she  behaves 
passably,  but  at  home  she  is  a  dolt,  smokes, 
is  miserly,  and  when  she  drinks  tea,  she  keeps 
the  sugar  between  her  lips  and  teeth  and 
speaks  at  the  same  time." 

Miss  Mieschankina. 

In  the  servants'  quarters  Roman,  a  more 
or  less  dissolute  peasant,  thinks  it  his  duty 
to  look  after  the  morals  of  the  women 
servants. 

A  large  fat  barmaid — a  cross  between  a 
pig  and  white  sturgeon. 

At  Malo-Bronnaya  (a  street  in  Moscow). 
A  little  girl  who  has  never  been  in  the  coun- 
try feels  it  and  raves  about  it,  speaks  about 
jackdaws,  crows  and  colts,  imagining  parks 
and  birds  on  trees. 

Two  young  officers  in  stays. 

[27] 


A  certain  captain  taught  his  daughter  the 
art  of  fortification. 

New  literary  forms  always  produce  new 
forms  of  life  and  that  is  why  they  are  so  re- 
volting to  the  conservative  human  mind. 

A  neurasthenic  undergraduate  comes  home 
to  a  lonely  country-house,  reads  French  mon- 
ologues, and  finds  them  stupid. 

People  love  talking  of  their  diseases, 
although  they  are  the  most  uninteresting 
things  in  their  lives. 

An  official,  who  wore  the  portrait  of  the 
Governor's  wife,  lent  money  on  interest;  he 
secretly  becomes  rich.  The  late  Governor's 
wife,  whose  portrait  he  has  worn  for  fourteen 
years,  now  lives  in  a  suburb,  a  poor  widow; 
her  son  gets  into  trouble  and  she  needs  4,000 
roubles.  She  goes  to  the  official,  and  he  lis- 
tens to  her  with  a  bored  look  and  says:  "I 
can't  do  anything  for  you,  my  lady." 

Women  deprived  of  the  company  of  men 

[28] 


pine,    men    deprived    of    the   company    of 
women  become  stupid. 

A  sick  innkeeper  said  to  the  doctor :    "If  I 
get  ill,  then  for  the  love  of  God  come  with- 
out waiting  for  a  summons.     My  sister  will 
never  call  you  in,  whatever  happens ;  she  is  a 
miser,  and  your  fee  is  three  roubles  a  visit." 
A  month  or  two  later  the  doctor  heard  that 
the  innkeeper  was  seriously  ill,  and  while  he 
was  making  his  preparations  to  go  and  see 
him,  he  received  a  letter  from  the  sister  say- 
ing:   "My  brother  is  dead.''    Five  days  later 
the  doctor  happened  to  go  to  the  village  and 
was  told  there  that  the  innkeeper  had  died 
that  morning.     Disgusted  he  went  to  the 
inn.     The  sister  dressed  in  black  stood  in  the 
corner  reading  a  psalm  book.     The  doctor 
began  to  upbraid  her  for  her  stinginess  and 
cruelty.     The   sister   went   on   reading  the 
psalms,   but  between  every   two  sentences 
she  stopped  to  quarrel  with  him — "Lots  of 
your    like    running    about    here.  .  .  .  The 
devils  brought  you  here."     She  belongs  to 
the  old  faith,  hates  passionately  and  swears 
desperately. 

[29] 


The  new  governor  made  a  speech  to  his 
clerks.  He  called  the  merchants  together — 
another  speech.  At  the  annual  prize-giving 
of  the  secondary  school  for  girls — a  speech 
on  true  enlightenment.  To  the  representa- 
tives of  the  press  a  speech.  He  called  the 
Jews  together:  "Jews,  I  have  summoned 
you.'*.  .  .  A  month  or  two  passes — he  does 
nothing.  Again  he  calls  the  merchants  to- 
gether— a  speech.  Again  the  Jews:  "Jews, 
I  have  summoned  you.".  .  .  He  has  wearied 
them  all.  At  last  he  says  to  his  Chancellor: 
"No,  the  work  is  too  much  for  me,  I  shall 
have  to  resign." 

A  student  at  a  village  theological  school 
was  learning  Latin  by  heart.  Every  half- 
hour  he  runs  down  to  the  maids'  room  and, 
closing  his  eyes,  feels  and  pinches  them ;  they 
scream  and  giggle;  he  returns  to  his  book 
again.     He    calls    it    "refreshing   oneself." 

The  Governor's  wife  invited  an  official, 
who  had  a  thin  voice  and  was  her  adorer,  to 
have  a  cup  of  chocolate  with  her,  and  for  a 
week  afterwards  he  was  in  bliss.  He  had 
saved  money  and  lent  it  but  not  on  interest. 

[30] 


"I  can't  lend  you  any,  your  son-in-law  would 
gamble  it  away.  No,  I  can't."  The  son- 
in-law  is  the  husband  of  the  daughter  who 
once  sat  in  a  box  in  a  boa ;  he  lost  at  cards 
and  embezzled  Government  money.  The 
official,  who  was  accustomed  to  herring  and 
vodka,  and  who  had  never  before  drunk  choc- 
olate, felt  sick  after  the  chocolate.  The  ex- 
pression on  the  lady's  face:  "Aren't  I  a  dar- 
ling^"; she  spent  any  amount  of  money  on 
dresses  and  looked  forward  to  making  a  dis- 
play of  them — so  she  gave  parties. 

Going  to  Paris  with  one's  wife  is  like 
going  to  Tula  ^  with  one's  samovar. 

The  young  do  not  go  in  for  literature,  be- 
cause the  best  of  them  work  on  steam  en- 
gines, in  factories,  in  industrial  undertak- 
ings. All  of  them  have  now  gone  into  indus- 
try, and  industry  is  making  enormous  prog- 
ress. 

Families  where  the  woman  is  bourgeoise 
easily  breed  adventurers,  swindlers,  and 
brutes  without  ideals. 

^Tula  is  a  Russian  city  where  samovars  are  manu- 
factured. 

[31] 


A  professor's  opinion:  not  Shakespeare, 
but  the  commentaries  on  him  are  the  thing. 

Let  the  coming  generation  attain  happi- 
ness; but  they  surely  ought  to  ask  them- 
selves, for  what  did  their  ancestors  live  and 
for  what  did  they  suffer. 

Love,  friendship,  respect  do  not  unite  peo- 
ple as  much  as  common  hatred  for  something. 

13th  December.  I  saw  the  owner  of  a 
mill,  the  mother  of  a  family,  a  rich  Russian 
woman,  who  has  never  seen  a  lilac  bush  in 
Russia. 

In  a  letter:  "A  Russian  abroad,  if  not  a 
spy,  is  a  fool."  The  neighbor  goes  to  Flor- 
ence to  cure  himself  of  love,  but  at  a  distance 
his  love  grows  stronger. 

Yalta.  A  young  man,  interesting,  liked 
by  a  lady  of  forty.  He  is  indifferent  to  her, 
avoids  her.  She  suffers  and  at  last,  out  of 
spite,  gets  up  a  scandal  about  him. 

[32] 


Pete's  mother  even  in  her  old  age  beaded 
her  eyes. 

Viciousness  is  a  bag  with  which  man  is 
born. 

B.  said  seriously  that  he  is  the  Russian 
Maupassant.     And  so  did  S. 

A  Jewish  surname :     Cap. 

A  lady  looking  like  a  fish  standing  on  its 
head ;  her  mouth  like  a  slit,  one  longs  to  put 
a  penny  in  it. 

Russians  abroad :  the  men  love  Russia  pas- 
sionately, but  the  women  don't  like  her  and 
soon  forget  her. 

Chemist  Propter. 

Rosalie  Ossipovna  Aromat. 

It  is  easier  to  ask  of  the  poor  than  of  the 
rich. 

And  she  began  to  engage  in  prostitution, 

[33] 


got  used  to  sleeping  on  the  bed,  while  her 
aunt,  fallen  into  poverty,  used  to  lie  on  the 
little  carpet  by  her  side  and  jumped  up  each 
time  the  bell  rang;  when  they  left,  she  would 
say  mindingly,  with  a  pathetic  grimace: 
"Something  for  the  chamber-maid."  And 
they  would  tip  her  sixpence. 

Prostitutes  in  Monte  Carlo,  the  whole 
tone  is  prostitutional ;  the  palm  trees,  it 
seems,  are  prostitutes,  and  the  chickens  are 
prostitutes. 

A  big  dolt,  Z.,  a  qualified  nurse,  of  the 
Petersburg  Rozhdestvensky  School,  having 
ideals,  fell  in  love  with  X.,  a  teacher,  and 
believed  him  to  be  ideal,  a  public  spirited 
worker  after  the  manner  of  novels  and  stor- 
ies of  which  she  was  so  fond.  Little  by  little 
she  found  him  out,  a  drunkard,  an  idler, 
good-natured  and  not  very  clever.  Dis- 
missed, he  began  to  live  on  his  wife,  sponged 
on  her.  He  was  an  excrescence,  a  kind  of 
sarcoma,  who  wasted  her  completely.  She 
was  once  engaged  to  attend  some  intellec- 
tual country  people,  she  went  to  them  every 
day;  they  felt  it  awkward  to  give  her  money 

[34l 


— and,  to  her  great  vexation,  gave  her  hus- 
band a  suit  as  a  present.  He  would  drink 
tea  for  hours  and  this  infuriated  her.  Liv- 
ing with  her  husband  she  grew  thin,  ugly, 
spiteful,  stamped  her  foot  and  shouted  at 
him:  "Leave  me,  you  low  fellow."  She 
hated  him.  She  worked,  and  people  paid 
the  money  to  him,  for,  being  a  Zemstvo 
worker,  she  took  no  money,  and  it  enraged 
her  that  their  friends  did  not  understand 
him  and  thought  him  ideal. 

A  young  man  made  a  million  marks,  lay 
down  on  them,  and  shot  himself. 

"That  woman.".  .  .  "I  married  when  I 
was  twenty;  I  have  not  drunk  a  glass  of 
vodka  all  my  life,  haven't  smoked  a  single 
cigarette."  After  he  had  run  off  with  an- 
other woman,  people  got  to  like  him  more 
and  to  believe  him  morq,  and,  when  he 
walked  in  the  street,  he  began  to  notice  that 
they  had  all  become  kinder  and  nicer  to  him 
— ^because  he  had  fallen. 

A  man  and  woman  marry  because  both  of 
them  don't  know  what  to  do  with  themselves. 

[35] 


The  power  and  salvation  of  a  people  lie 
in  its  intellegentsia,  in  the  intellectuals  who 
think  honestly,  feel,  and  can  work. 

A  man  without  a  mustache  is  like  a 
woman  with  a  mustache. 

A  man  who  cannot  win  a  woman  by  a  kiss 
will  not  win  her  by  a  blow. 

For  one  sensible  person  there  are  a  thou- 
sand fools,  and  for  one  sensible  word  there 
are  a  thousand  stupid  ones;  the  thousand 
overwhelms  the  one,  and  that  is  why  cities 
and  villages  progress  so  slowly.  The  major- 
ity, the  mass,  always  remain  stupid;  it  will 
always  overwhelm;  the  sensible  man  should 
give  up  hope  of  educating  and  lifting  it  up 
to  himself;  he  had  better  call  in  the  assist- 
ance of  material  force,  build  railways,  tele- 
graphs, telephones — in  that  way  he  will  con- 
quer and  help  life  forward. 

Really  decent  people  are  only  to  be  found 
amongst  men  who  have  definite,  either  con- 
servative or  radical,   convictions;  so-called 

[36] 


moderate  men  are  much  inclined  to  rewards, 
commissions,  orders,  promotions. 

"What  did  your  uncle  die  of?" 
"Instead  of  fifteen  Botkin  drops,^  as  the 
doctor  prescribed,  he  took  sixteen." 

A  young  philologist,  who  has  just  left  the 
University,  comes  home  to  his  native  town. 
He  is  elected  churchwarden.  He  does  not 
believe  in  God,  but  goes  to  church  regularly, 
makes  the  sign  of  the  cross  when  passing  near 
a  church  or  chapel,  thinking  that  that  sort  of 
thing  is  necessary  for  the  people  and  that  the 
salvation  of  Russia  is  bound  up  with  it.  He 
is  elected  chairman  of  the  Zemstvo  board 
and  a  Justice  of  the  Peace,  he  wins  orders 
and  medals;  he  does  not  notice  that  he  has 
reached  the  age  of  forty-five;  then  suddenly 
he  realizes  that  all  the  time  he  has  been  act- 
ing and  making  a  fool  of  himself,  but  it  is 
now  too  late  to  change  his  way  of  life. 
Once  in  his  sleep  he  suddenly  hears  like 
the  report  of  a  gun  the  words:  "What  are 
you  doing?" — and  he  starts  up  all  in  a  sweat. 

1 A  very  harmless  purgative. 

[37] 


One  cannot  resist  evil,  but  one  can  resist 
good. 

He  flatters  the  authorities  like  a  priest. 

Instead  of  sheets — dirty  tablecloths. 

A  Jewish  surname:  Perchik  (little  pep- 
per). 

A  man  in  conversation:  "And  all  the  rest 
of  it." 

A  rich  man,  usually  insolent,  his  conceit 
enormous,  but  bears  his  riches  like  a  cross. 
If  the  ladies  and  generals  did  not  dispense 
charity  on  his  account,  if  it  were  not  for  the 
poor  students  and  the  beggars,  he  would  feel 
the  anguish  of  loneliness.  If  the  beggars 
struck  and  agreed  not  to  beg  from  him,  he 
would  go  to  them  himself. 

The  husband  invites  his  friends  to  his 
country-house  in  the  Crimea;  and  afterwards 
his  wife,  without  her  husband's  knowledge, 
brings  them  the  bill  and  is  paid  for  board 
and  lodging. 

[38] 


Potapov  becomes  attached  to  the  brother, 
and  this  is  the  beginning  of  his  falling  in 
love  with  the  sister.  Divorces  his  wife. 
Afterwards  the  son  sends  him  plans  for  a 
rabbit-hutch. 

''I  have  sown  clover  and  oats." 

"No  good;  you  had  much  better  sow 
lucerne." 

"I  have  begun  to  keep  a  pig." 

"No  good.  It  does  not  pay.  You  had 
better  go  in  for  mares." 

A  girl,  a  devoted  friend,  out  of  the  best 
of  motives,  went  about  with  a  subscription 
list  for  X.,  who  was  not  in  want. 

Why  are  the  dogs  of  Constantinople  so 
often  described"? 

Disease :     "He  has  got  hydropathy." 

I  visit  a  friend,  find  him  at  supper;  there 
are  many  guests.  It  is  very  gay ;  I  am  glad 
to  chatter  with  the  women  and  drink  wine. 
A  wonderfully  pleasant  mood.     Suddenly 

[39] 


up  gets  N.  with  an  air  of  importance,  as 
though  he  were  a  public  prosecutor^  and 
makes  a  speech  in  my  honor.  "The  magi- 
cian of  words  .  .  .  ideals  ...  in  our  time 
when  ideals  grow  dim  .  .  .  you  are  sowing 
wisdom,  undying  things.  ..."  I  feel  as 
if  I  had  had  a  cover  over  me  and  that  now 
the  cover  had  been  taken  off  and  some  one 
was  aiming  a  pistol  at  me. 

After  the  speech — a  murmur  of  conversa- 
tion, then  silence.  The  gayety  has  gone. 
"You  must  speak  now,"  says  my  neighbor. 
But  what  can  I  say?  I  would  gladly  throw 
the  bottle  at  him.  And  I  go  to  bed  with 
some  sediment  in  my  soul.  "Look  what  a 
fool  sits  among  you !" 

The  maid,  when  she  makes  the  bed,  always 
puts  the  slippers  under  the  bed  close  to  the 
wall.  The  fat  master,  unable  to  bear  it  any 
longer,  gives  the  maid  notice.  It  turns  out 
that  the  doctor  told  her  to  put  the  slippers  as 
far  as  possible  under  the  bed  so  as  to  cure  the 
man  of  his  obesity. 

The  club  blackballeH  a  respectable  man 

[40] 


because  all  of  the  members  were  out  of  hu- 
mor; they  ruined  his  prospects. 

A  large  factory.  The  young  employer 
plays  the  superior  to  all  and  is  rude  to  the 
employees  who  have  University  degrees. 
Only  the  gardener,  a  German,  has  the  cour- 
age to  be  offended:  "How  dare  you,  gold 
bag?' 

A  tiny  little  schoolboy  with  the  name  of 
Trachtenbauer. 

Whenever  he  reads  in  the  newspaper 
about  the  death  of  a  great  man,  he  wears 
mourning. 

In  the  theatre.  A  gentleman  asks  a  lady 
to  take  her  hat  off,  as  it  is  in  his  way.  Grum- 
bling, disagreeableness,  entreaties.  At  last 
a  confession :  "Madam,  I  am  the  author  of 
the  play."     She  answered :    "I  don't  care." 

In  order  to  act  wisely  it  is  not  enough  to  be     \ 
wise  (Dostoevsky). 

A.  and  B.  have  a  bet.     A.  wins  the  wager, 

[41] 


by  eating  twelve  cutlets;  B.  does  not  pay 
even  for  the  cutlets. 

It  is  terrible  to  dine  every  day  with  a  per- 
son who  stammers  and  says  stupid  things. 

Glancing  at  a  plump,  appetizing  woman: 
"It  is  not  a  woman,  it  is  a  full  moon." 

From  her  face  one  would  imagine  that 
under  her  stays  she  has  got  gills. 

For  a  farce :    Kapiton  Ivanovitch  Boil. 

An  income-tax  inspector  and  an  excise 
official,  in  order  to  justify  their  occupations 
to  themselves,  say  spontaneously:  "It  is  an 
interesting  profession,  there  is  a  lot  of  work, 
it  is  a  live  occupation." 

At  twenty  she  loved  Z.,  at  twenty-four  she 
married  N.  not  because  she  loved  him,  but 
because  she  thought  him  a  good,  wise,  ideal 
man.  The  couple  lived  happily;  every  one 
envies  them,  and  indeed  their  life  passes 
smoothly  and  placidly;  she  is  satisfied,  and, 
when  people  discuss  love,  she  says  that  for 

[42] 


family  life  not  love  nor  passion  is  wanted, 
but  affection.  But  once  the  music  played 
suddenly,  and,  inside  her  heart,  everything 
broke  up  like  ice  in  spring:  she  remembered 
Z.  and  her  love  for  him,  and  she  thought  with 
despair  that  her  life  was  ruined,  spoilt  for 
ever,  and  that  she  was  unhappy.  Then  it 
happened  to  her  with  the  NeW  Year  greet- 
ings; when  people  wished  her  "New  Hap- 
piness," she  indeed  longed  for  new  happiness. 

Z.  goes  to  a  doctor,  who  examines  him  and 
finds  that  he  is  suffering  from  heart  disease. 
Z.  abruptly  changes  his  way  of  life,  takes 
medicine,  can  only  talk  about  his  disease; 
the  whole  town  knows  that  he  has  heart  dis- 
ease and  all  the  doctors,  whom  he  regularly 
consults,  say  that  he  has  got  heart  disease. 
He  does  not  marry,  gives  up  amateur  theat- 
ricals, does  not  drink,  and  when  he  walks 
does  so  slowly  and  hardly  breathes.  Eleven 
years  later  he  has  to  go  to  Moscow  and  there 
he  consults  a  specialist.  The  latter  finds 
that  his  heart  is  perfectly  sound.  Z.  is  over- 
joyed, but  he  can  no  longer  return  to  a  nor- 
mal life,  for  he  has  got  accustomed  to  going 
to  bed  early  and  to  walking  slowly,  and  he  is 

[43] 


bored  if  he  cannot  speak  of  his  disease.  The 
only  result  is  that  he  gets  to  hate  doctors — 
that  is  all. 

A  woman  is  fascinated  not  by  art,  but  by 
the  noise  made  by  those  who  have  to  do  with 
art. 

N.,  a  dramatic  critic,  has  a  mistress  X.,  an 
actress.  Her  benefit  night.  The  play  is 
rotten,  the  acting  poor,  but  N.  has  to  praise. 
He  writes  briefly :  "The  play  and  the  leading 
actress  had  an  enormous  success.  Particu- 
lars to-morrow."  As  he  wrote  the  last  two 
words,  he  gave  a  sigh  of  relief.  Next  day 
he  goes  to  X. ;  she  opens  the  door,  allows  him 
to  kiss  and  embrace  her,  and  in  a  cutting  tone 
says:  "Particulars  to-morrow." 

In  Kislovodsk  or  some  other  watering- 
place  Z.  picked  up  a  girl  of  twenty-two;  she 
was  poor,  straightforward,  he  took  pity  on 
her  and,  in  addition  to  her  fee,  he  left 
twenty-five  roubles  on  the  chest  of  drawers; 
he  left  her  room  with  the  feeling  of  a  man 
who  has  done  a  good  deed.  The  next  time 
he  visited  her,  he  noticed  an  expensive  ash- 

[44] 


tray  and  a  man's  fur  cap,  bought  out  of  his 
twenty-five  roubles — the  girl  again  starving, 
her  cheeks  hollow. 

N.  mortgages  his  estate  with  the  Bank  of 
the  Nobility  at  4  per  cent,  and  then  lends  the 
money  on  mortgage  at  12  per  cent. 

Aristocrats*?  The  same  ugly  bodies  and 
physical  uncleanliness,  the  same  toothless 
old  age  and  disgusting  death,  as  with  market- 
women. 

N.,  when  a  group  is  being  photographed, 
always  stands  in  the  front  row ;  on  addresses 
he  always  signs  the  first;  at  anniversaries  he 
is  always  the  first  to  speak.  Always  won- 
ders :  "O  soup  I  O  pastries !" 

Z.  got  tired  of  having  visitors,  and  he 
hired  a  French  woman  to  live  in  his  house  as 
if  she  were  his  mistress.  This  shocked  the 
ladies  and  he  no  longer  had  visitors. 

Z.  is  a  torch-bearer  at  funerals.  He  is  an 
idealist.     "In  the  undertaker's  shop." 

[45] 


N.  and  Z.  are  intimate  friends,  but  when 
they  meet  in  society,  they  at  once  make  fun 
of  one  another — out  of  shyness. 

Complaint :  "My  son  Stepan  was  delicate, 
and  I  therefore  sent  him  to  school  in  the 
Crimea,  but  there  he  was  caned  with  a  vine- 
branch,  and  that  gave  him  philoxera  in  the 
behind  and  now  the  doctors  can  not  cure 
him." 

Mitya  and  Katya  were  told  that  their 
papa  blasted  rocks  in  the  quarry.  They 
wanted  to  blow  up  their  cross  grandpapa,  so 
they  took  a  pound  of  powder  from  their 
father's  room,  put  it  in  a  bottle,  inserted  a 
wick,  and  placed  it  under  their  grandfather's 
<?hair,  when  he  was  dozing  after  dinner;  but 
soldiers  marched  by  with  the  band  playing — 
and  this  was  the  only  thing  that  prevented 
them  from  carrying  out  their  plan. 

Sleep  is  a  marvelous  mystery  of  Nature 
which  renews  all  the  powers  of  man,  bodily 
and  spiritual.  (Bishop  Porphyrius  Usgen- 
sky,  "The  Book  of  My  Life.") 

[46] 


A  woman  imagines  that  she  has  a  peculiar, 
exceptional  constitution,  whose  ailments  are 
Uifferent  from  other  people's  and  which  can- 
not stand  ordinary  medicine.  She  thinks 
that  her  son  is  unlike  other  people's  sons, 
that  he  has  to  be  brought  up  differently. 
She  believes  in  principles,  but  she  thinks  that 
they  apply  to  every  one  but  herself,  because 
she  lives  in  exceptional  circumstances.  The 
son  grows  up,  and  she  tries  to  find  an  excep- 
tional wife  for  him.  Those  around  her  suf- 
fer.    The  son  turns  out  a  scoundrel. 

Poor  long-suffering  art ! 

A  man  whose  madness  takes  the  form  of 
an  idea  that  he  is  a  ghost :  walks  at  night. 

A  sentimental  man,  like  Lavrov,  has  mo- 
ments of  pleasant  emotion  and  makes  the 
request :  "Write  a  letter  to  my  auntie  in  Bri- 
ansk ;  she  is  a  darling.  .  .  ." 

There  is  a  bad  smell  in  the  bam :  ten  years 
ago  haymakers  slept  the  night  in  it  and  ever 
since  it  smells. 

[47] 


An  officer  at  a  doctor's.  The  money  on  a 
plate.  The  doctor  can  see  in  the  looking- 
glass  that  the  patient  takes  twenty-five  rou- 
bles from  the  plate  and  pays  him  with  it. 

Russia  is  a  nobody's  country ! 

Z.  who  is  always  saying  banal  things: 
"With  the  agility  of  a  bear,"  "on  one's  fav- 
orite corn." 

A  savings  bank:  the  clerk,  a  very  nice 
man,  looks  down  on  the  bank,  considers  it 
useless — and  yet  goes  on  working  there. 

A  radical  lady,  who  crosses  herself  at 
night,  is  secretly  full  of  prejudice  and  super- 
stition, hears  that  in  order  to  be  happy  one 
should  boil  a  black  cat  by  night.  She  steals 
a  cat  and  tries  to  boil  it. 

A  publisher's  twenty-fifth  anniversary. 
Tears,  a  speech:  "I  offer  ten  roubles  to  the 
literary  fund,  the  interest  to  be  paid  to  the 
poorest  writer,  but  on  condition  that  a  spe- 
cial committee  is  appointed  to  work  out  the 

[48] 


rules  according  to  which  the  distribution 
shall  be  made." 

He  wore  a  blouse  and  despised  those  who 
wore  frock  coats.     A  stew  of  trousers. 

The  ice  cream  is  made  of  milk  in  which, 
as  it  were,  the  patients  bathed. 

It  was  a  grand  forest  of  timber,  but  a 
Government  Conservator  was  appointed, 
and  in  two  years  time  there  was  no  more  tim- 
ber; the  caterpillar  pest. 

X.:  "Choleraic  disorder  in  my  stomach 
started  with  the  cider." 

Of  some  writers  each  work  taken  sepa- 
rately is  brilliant,  but  taken  as  a  whole  they 
are  indefinite ;  of  others  each  particular  work 
represents  nothing  outstanding;  but,  for  all 
that,  taken  as  a  whole  they  are  distinct  and 
brilliant. 

N.  rings  at  the  door  of  an  actress;  he  is 
nervous,  his  heart  beats,  at  the  critical  mo- 
ment he  gets  into  a  panic  and  runs  away ;  the 

[49] 


maid  opens  the  door  and  sees  nobody.  He 
returns,  rings  again — but  has  not  the  courage 
to  go  in.  In  the  end  the  porter  comes  out 
and  gives  him  a  thrashing. 

A  gentle  quiet  schoolmistress  secretly 
beats  her  pupils,  because  she  believes  in  the 
good  of  corporal  punishment. 

N. :  "Not  only  the  dog,  but  even  the 
horses  howled." 

N.  marries.  His  mother  an3  sister  see  a 
great  many  faults  in  his  wife;  they  are  dis- 
tressed, and  only  after  four  or  five  years 
realize  that  she  is  just  like  themselves. 

The  wife  cried.  The  husband  took  her 
by  the  shoulders  and  shook  her,  and  she 
stopped  crying. 

After  his  marriage  everything — ^politics, 
literature,  society — did  not  seem  to  him  as 
interesting  as  they  had  before;  but  now 
every  trifle  concerning  his  wife  and  child 
became  a  most  important  matter. 

[50] 


"Why  are  thy  songs  so  short  ^"  a  bird 
was  once  asked.  "Is  it  because  thou  art 
short  of  breath?' 

"I  have  very  many  songs  and  I  should 
like  to  sing  them  all." 

(A.  Daudet.) 

The  dog  hates  the  teacher;  they  tell  it  not 
to  bark  at  him ;  it  looks,  does  not  bark,  only 
whimpers  with  rage. 

Faith  is  a  spiritual  faculty;  animals  have 
not  got  it;  savages  and  uncivilized  people 
have  merely  fear  and  doubt.  Only  highly 
developed  natures  can  have  faith. 

Death  is  terrible,  but  still  more  terrible  is 
the  feeling  that  you  might  live  for  ever  and 
never  die. 

The  public  really  loves  in  art  that  which 
is  banal  and  long  familiar,  that  to  which 
they  have  grown  accustomed. 

A  progressive,  educated,  young,  but  stingy 
school  guardian  inspects  the  school  every 
day,  makes  long  speeches  there,  but  does  not 

151] 


spend  a  penny  on  it:  the  school  is  falling  to 
pieces,  but  he  considers  himself  useful  and 
necessary.  The  teacher  hates  him,  but  he 
does  not  notice  it.  The  harm  is  great. 
Once  the  teacher,  unable  to  stand  it  any 
longer,  facing  him  with  anger  and  disgust, 
bursts  out  swearing  at  him. 

Teacher:  "Poushkin's  centenary  should 
not  be  celebrated;  he  did  nothing  for  the 
church." 

Miss  Guitarov  (actress). 

If  you  wish  to  become  an  optimist  and 
understand  life,  stop  believing  what  people 
say  and  write,  observe  and  discover  for  your- 
self. 

Husband  and  wife  zealously  followed 
X.'s  idea  and  built  up  their  life  according  to 
it  as  if  it  were  a  formula.  Only  just  before 
Heath  they  asked  themselves :  "Perhaps  that 
idea  is  wrong *?  Perhaps  the  saying  'mens 
Sana  in  corpore  sano'  is  untrue?" 

[52] 


I  detest:  a  playful  Jew,  a  radical  Ukrain- 
ian, and  a  drunken  German. 

The  University  brings  out  all  abilities, 
including  stupidity. 

Taking  into  consideration,  dear  sir,  as  a 
result  of  this  view,  dear  sir.  .  .  . 

The  most  intolerable  people  are  provin- 
cial celebrities. 

Owing  to  our  flightiness,  because  the  ma- 
jority of  us  are  unable  and  unaccustomed  to 
think  or  to  look  deeply  into  life's  phenom- 
ena, nowhere  else  do  people  so  often  say: 
"How  banal!"  nowhere  else  do  people  re- 
gard so  superficially,  and  often  contemptu- 
ously other  people's  merits  or  serious  ques- 
tions. On  the  other  hand  nowhere  else  does 
the  authority  of  a  name  weigh  so  heavily  as 
with  us  Russians,  who  have  been  abased  by 
centuries  of  slavery  and  fear  freedom.  . 

A  doctor  advised  a  merchant  to  eat  soup 
and  chicken.  The  merchant  thought  the  ad- 
vice ironical.     At  first  he  ate  a  dinner  of 

[53] 


botvinia  an3  pork,  and  then,  as  if  recollect- 
ing the  doctor's  orders,  ordered  soup  and 
chicken  and  swallowed  them  down  too, 
thinking  it  a  great  joke. 

Father  Epaminond  catches  fish  and  puts 
them  in  his  pocket;  then,  when  he  gets  home, 
he  takes  out  a  fish  at  a  time,  as  he  wants  it, 
and  fries  it. 

The  nobleman  X.  sold  his  estate  to  N. 
with  all  the  furniture  according  to  an  inven- 
tory, but  he  took  away  everything  else,  even 
the  oven  dampers,  and  after  that  N.  hated 
all  noblemen. 

The  rich,  intellectual  X.,  of  peasant  ori- 
gin, implored  his  son:  *'Mike,  don't  get  out 
of  your  class.  Be  a  peasant  until  you  die, 
iio  not  become  a  nobleman,  nor  a  merchant, 
nor  a  bourgeois.  If,  as  you  say,  the  Zem- 
stvo  officer  now  has  the  right  to  inflict  cor- 
poral punishment  on  peasants,  then  let  him 
also  have  the  right  to  punish  you."  He  was 
proud  of  his  peasant  origin,  he  was  even 
haughty  about  it. 

[54] 


They  celebrated  the  birthday  of  an  honest 
man.  Took  the  opportunity  to  show  off  and 
praise  one  another.  Only  towards  the  end 
of  the  dinner  they  suddenly  discovered  that 
the  man  had  not  been  invited;  they  had  for- 
gotten, 

A  gentle  quiet  woman,  getting  into  a  tem- 
per, says :  "If  I  were  a  man,  I  would  just  bash 
your  filthy  mug." 

A  Mussulman  for  the  salvation  of  his  soul 
digs  a  well.  It  would  be  a  pleasant  thing  if 
each  of  us  left  a  school,  a  well,  or  something 
like  that,  so  that  life  should  not  pass  away 
into  eternity  without  leaving  a  trace  behind 
it. 

We  are  tired  out  by  servility  and  hypoc- 
risy. 

N.  once  had  his  clothes  torn  by  dogs,  and 
now,  when  he  pays  a  call  anywhere,  he  asks: 
"Aren't  there  any  dogs  here"?'' 

A  young  pimp,  'in  order  to  keep  up  his 
powers,  always  eats  garlic. 

[55] 


School  guardian.  Widowed  priest  plays 
the  harmonium  and  sings:  "Rest  with  the 
saints." 

In  Jul)^  the  red  bird  sings  the  whole  morn- 
ing. 

"A  large  selection  of  cigs^'  ^  — so  read  X. 
every  day  when  he  went  down  the  street,  and 
wondered  how  one  could  deal  only  in  cigs 
and  who  wanted  them.  It  took  him  thirty 
years  before  he  read  it  correctly:  "A  large 
selection  of  cigars." 

A  bride  to  an  engineer:  a  dynamite  car- 
tridge filled  with  one-hundred-rouble  notes. 

"I  have  not  read  Herbert  Spencer.  Tell 
me  his  subjects.  What  does  he  write 
about?"  "I  want  to  paint  a  panel  for  the 
Paris  exhibition.  Suggest  a  subject."  (A 
wearisome  lady.) 

The  idle,  so-called  governing,  classes  can- 
not remain  long  without  war.     When  there 

^Cigs  in  Russian  is  a  kind  of  fish. 

[56] 


is  no  war  they  are  bored,  idleness  fatigues 
and  irritates  them,  they  do  not  know  what 
they  live  for;  they  bite  one  another,  try  to 
say  unpleasant  things  to  one  another,  if  pos- 
sible with  impunity,  and  the  best  of  them 
make  the  greatest  efforts  not  to  bore  the 
others  and  themselves.  But  when  war 
comes,  it  possesses  all,  takes  hold  of  the  im- 
agination, and  the  common  misfortune  unites 
all. 

An  unfaithful  wife  is  a  large  cold  cutlet 
which  one  does  not  want  to  touch,  because 
some  one  else  has  had  it  in  his  hands. 

An  old  maid  writes  a  treatise :  "The  tram- 
line of  piety." 

Ryzeborsky,  Tovbin,  Gremoukhin,  Kop- 
tin. 

She  had  not  sufficient  skin  on  her  face ;  in 
order  to  open  her  eyes  she  had  to  shut  her 
mouth  and  vice  versa. 

When  she  raises  her  skirt  and  shows  her 
lace  petticoat,  it  is  obvious  that  she  dresses 

[57] 


like  a  woman  who  is  accustomed  to  be  seen 
by  men. 

X.  philosophizes:  "Take  the  word  'nose.' 
In  Russia  it  seems  something  unmentionable, 
means  the  deuce  knows  what,  one  may  say, 
the  indecent  part  of  the  body,  and  in  French 
it  means  wedding."  And  indeed  X.'s  nose 
was  an  indecent  part  of  the  body. 

A  girl,  flirting,  chatters:  "All  are  afraid 
of  me  .  .  .  men,  and  the  wind  ...  ah, 
leave  me  alone!  I  shall  never  marry." 
And  at  home  poverty,  her  father  a  regular 
drunkard.  And  if  people  could  see  how  she 
and  her  mother  work,  how  she  screens  her 
father,  they  would  feel  the  deepest  'respect 
for  her  and  would  wonder  why  she  is  so 
ashamed  of  poverty  and  work,  and  is  not 
ashamed  of  that  chatter. 

A  restaurant.  An  advanced  conversation. 
Andrey  Andreyevitch,  a  good-natured  bour- 
geois, suddenly  declares:  "Do  you  know, 
gentlemen,  I  was  once  an  anarchist!" 
Every  one  is  astonished.  A.  A.  tells  the 
following  tale:  a  strict  father;  a  technical 

[58] 


school  opened  in  the  provincial  town  in  a 
craze  for  technical  education;  they  have  no 
ideas  and  they  did  not  know  what  to  teach 
(since,  if  you  are  going  to  make  shoemakers 
of  all  the  inhabitants,   who  will  buy  the 
shoes'?);  he   was   expelled   and  his  father 
turned  him  out  of  the  house;  he  had  to  take 
a  job  as  an  assistant  clerk  on  the  squire's  es- 
tate; he  became  enraged  with  the  rich,  the 
well-fed,  and  the  fat;  the  squire  planted 
cherry  trees,  A.  A.  helped  him,  and  suddenly 
a  desire  came  over  him  to  cut  off  the  squire's 
white  fat  fingers  with  the  spade,  as  if  it  were 
by  accident;  and  closing  his  eyes  he  struck  a 
blow  with  the  shovel  as  hard  as  he  could, 
but  it  missed.     Then  he  went  away ;  the  for- 
est, the  quiet  in  the  fields,  rain ;  he  longed  for 
warmth,  went  to  his  aunt,  she  gave  him  tea 
and    rolls — and    his    anarchism    was    gone. 
After  the  story  there  passed  by  the  table 
Councillor  of  State  L.     Immediately  A.  A. 
gets  up  and  explains  how  L.,  Councillor  of 
State,  owns  houses,  etc. 

I  was  apprenticed  to  a  tailor.  He  cut  the 
trousers;  I  did  the  sewing,  but  the  stripe 
came  down  here  right  over  the  knee.  Then 
I  was  apprenticed  to  a  cabinet-maker.     T 

[59] 


was  planing  once  when  the  plane  flew  out  of 
my  hands  and  hit  the  window;  it  broke  the 
glass.  The  squire  was  a  Lett,  his  name 
Shtoppev  ^ ;  and  he  had  an  expression  on  his 
face  as  if  he  were  going  to  wink  and  say: 
''Wouldn't  it  be  nice  to  have  a  drink?'  In 
the  evenings  he  drank,  drank  by  himself — 
and  I  felt  hurt. 

A  dealer  in  cider  puts  labels  on  his  bottles 
with  a  crown  printed  on  them.  It  irritates 
and  vexes  X.  who  torments  himself  with  the 
idea  that  a  mere  trader  is  usurping  the 
crown.  Xjt  cjbmplainis  to  the  authorities, 
worries  every  one,  seeks  redress  and  so  on ;  he 
dies  from  irritation  and  worry. 

A  governess  is  teased  with  the  nickname 
Gesticulation. 

Shaptcherigin,  Zambisebulsky,  Sveent- 
chutka,  Chemburaklya. 

Senile  pomposity,  senile  vindictiveness. 
What  a  number  of  despicable  old  men  I  have 
known ! 

^Shtopov  means  "cork-screw." 

[60] 


How  delightful  when  on  a  bright  frosty 
morning  a  new  sleigh  with  a  rug  comes  to 
the  door. 

X.  arrived  to  take  up  duty  at  N.,  he  shows 
himself  a  despot:  he  is  annoyed  when  some 
one  else  is  a  success;  he  becomes  quite  dif- 
ferent in  the  presence  of  a  third  person; 
when  a  woman  is  present,  his  tone  changes; 
when  he  pours  out  wine,  he  first  puts  a  little 
in  his  own  glass  and  then  helps  the  company; 
when  he  walks  with  a  lady  he  takes  her  arm ; 
in  general  he  tries  to  show  refinement.  He 
does  not  laugh  at  other  people's  jokes: 
"You  repeat  yourself."  "There  is  nothing 
new  in  that."  Every  one  is  sick  of  him;  he 
sermonizes.  The  old  women  nickname  him 
"the  top." 

A  man  who  can  not  do  anything,  does  not 
know  how  to  act,  how  to  enter  a  room,  how 
to  ask  for  anything. 

Utiujm^ 

A  man  who  always  insists:     "I  haven't 

[61] 


got    syphilis.     Fm    an    honest    man.     My 
wife  is  an  honest  woman." 

X.  all  his  life  spoke  and  wrote  about  the 
vices  of  servants  and  about  the  way  to  man- 
age and  control  them,  and  he  died  deserted 
by  every  one  except  his  valet  and  his  cook. 

A  little  girl  with  rapture  about  her  aunt: 
"She  is  very  beautiful,  as  beautiful  as  our 
dog!" 

Marie  Ivanovna  Kolstovkin. 

In  a  love  letter:  "Stamp  enclosed  for  a 
reply." 

The  best  men  leave  the  villages  for  the 
towns,  and  therefore  the  villages  decline  and 
will  continue  to  decline. 

Pavel  was  a  cook  for  forty  years;  he 
loathed  the  things  which  he  cooked  and  he 
never  ate. 

He  ceased  to  love  a  woman ;  the  sensation 

[62] 


of  not  being  in  love;  a  peaceful  state  of 
mind;  long  peaceful  thoughts. 

Conservative  people  do  so  little  harm  be- 
cause they  are  timid  and  have  no  confidence 
in  themselves;  harm  is  done  not  by  conserv- 
ative but  by  malicious  people. 

One  of  two  things:  either  sit  in  the  car- 
riage or  get  out  of  it. 

For  a  play :  an  old  woman  of  radical  views 
dresses  like  a  girl,  smokes,  cannot  exist  with- 
out company,  sympathetic. 

In  a  Pullman  car — these  are  the  dregs  of 
society. 

On  the  lady's  bosom  was  the  portrait  of  a 
fat  German. 

A  man  who  at  all  elections  all  his  life  long 
always  voted  against  the  Left. 

They  undressed  the  corpse,  but  had  no 
time  to  take  the  gloves  off;  a  corpse  in 
gloves. 

[63] 


A  farmer  at  dinner  boasts:  "Life  in 
the  country  is  cheap — one  has  one's  own 
chickens,  one's  own  pigs — life  is  cheap." 

A  customs  official,  from  want  of  love  for 
his  work,  searches  the  passengers,  looking  for 
documents  of  a  suspicious  political  nature, 
and  makes  even  the  gendarmes  indignant. 

A  real  male  (mouzhtchina)  consists  of 
man  (mouzh)  and  title  (tchin). 

Education:  "Masticate  your  food  prop- 
erly," their  father  told  them.  And  they 
masticated  properly,  and  walked  two  hours 
every  day,  and  washed  in  cold  water,  and 
yet  they  turned  out  unhappy  and  without 
talent. 

Commercial  and  industrial  medicine. 

N.  forty  years  old  married  a  girl  seven- 
teen. The  first  night,  when  they  returned 
to  his  mining  village,  she  went  to  bed  and 
suddenly  burst  into  tears,  because  she  did 
not  love  him.     He  is  a  good  soul,  is  over- 

[64] 


whelmed  with  distress,  and  goes  off  to  sleep 
in  his  little  working  room. 

On  the  spot  where  the  former  manor  house 
stood  there  is  no  trace  left;  only  one  lilac 
bush  remains  and  that  for  some  reason  does 
not  bloom. 

Son:     "To-day  I  believe  is  Thursday." 
Mother:    (not  having  heard)    "What^" 
Son:  (angrily)  "Thursday!"  (quietly)  "I 
ought  to  take  a  bath." 
Mother:  "What'?" 
Son:  (angry  and  offended)  "Bath!" 

N.  goes  to  X.  every  day,  talks  to  him,  and 
shows  real  sympathy  in  his  grief;  suddenly 
X.  leaves  his  house,  where  he  was  so  com- 
fortable. N.  asks  X.'s  mother  why  he  went 
away.  She  answers:  "Because  you  came 
to  see  him  every  day." 

It  was  such  a  romantic  wedding,  and  later 
— what  fools !    what  babies ! 

Love.  Either  it  is  a  remnant  of  some- 
thing degenerating,   something  which  once 

[65] 


has  been  immense,  or  it  is  a  particle  of  what 
will  in  the  future  develop  into  something 
immense;  but  in  the  present  it  is  unsatisfy- 
ing, it  gives  much  less  than  one  expects. 

A  very  intellectual  man  all  his  life  tells 
lies  about  hypnotism,  spiritualism — and 
people  believe  him;  yet  he  is  quite  a  nice 
man. 

In  Act  I,  X.,  a  respectable  man,  borrows 
a  hundred  roubles  from  N.,  and  in  the  course 
of  all  four  acts  he  does  not  pay  it  back. 

A  grandmother  has  six  sons  and  three 
daughters,  and  best  of  all  she  loves  the 
failure,  who  drinks  and  has  been  in  prison. 

N.,  the  manager  of  a  factory,  rich,  with  a 
wife  and  children,  happy,  has  written  "An 
investigation  into  the  mineral  spring  at  X." 
He  was  much  praised  for  it  and  was  invited 
to  join  the  staff  of  a  newspaper;  he  gave  up 
his  post,  went  to  Petersburg,  divorced  his 
wife,  spent  his  money — and  went  to  the 
dogs. 

[66] 


(Looking     at     a     photograph     album) : 
"Whose  ugly  face  is  that?" 
'That's  my  uncle." 

Alas,  what  is  terrible  is  not  the  skeletons, 
but  the  fact  that  I  am  no  longer  terrified  by 
them. 

A  boy  of  good  family,  capricious,  full  of 
mischief,  obstinate,  wore  out  his  whole  fam- 
ily. The  father,  an  official  who  played  the 
piano,  got  to  hate  him,  took  him  into  a  cor- 
ner of  the  garden,  flogged  him  with  consid- 
erable pleasure,  and  then  felt  disgusted  with 
himself.  The  son  has  grown  up  and  is  an 
officer. 

N.  courted  Z.  for  a  long  time.  She  was 
very  religious,  and,  when  he  proposed  to  her, 
she  put  a  dried  flower,  which  he  had  once 
given  to  her,  into  her  prayer-book. 

Z:  "As  you  are  going  to  town,  post  my 
letter  in  the  letter-box." 

N:  (alarmed)  "Where*?  I  don't  know 
where  the  letter-box  is." 

[67] 


Z:  "Will  you  also  call  at  the  chemist's 
and  get  me  some  naphthaline^" 

N:  (alarmed)  "I'll  forget  the  naphtha- 
line, I'll  forget." 

A  storm  at  sea.  Lawyers  ought  to  regard 
it  as  a  crime. 

X.  went  to  stay  with  his  friend  in  the 
country.  The  place  was  magnificent,  but 
the  servants  treated  him  badly,  he  was  un- 
comfortable, although  his  friend  considered 
him  a  big  man.  The  bed  was  hard,  he  was 
not  provided  with  a  night  shirt  and  he  felt 
ashamed  to  ask  for  one. 

At  a  rehearsal.     The  wife: 

"How  does  that  melody  in  Pagliacci  go? 
Whistle  it." 

"One  must  not  whistle  on  the  stage;  the 
stage  is  a  temple." 

He  died  from  fear  of  cholera. 

As  like  as  a  nail  is  to  a  requiem. 

A  conversation  on  another  planet  about 
[68] 


the  earth  a  thousand  years  hence.     "Do  you 
remember  that  white  tree^" 

Anakhthema ! 

Zigzagovsky,  Oslizin,  Svintchulka,  Der- 
baliguin. 

A  woman  with  money,  the  money  hidden 
everywhere,  in  her  bosom  and  between  her 
legs.  ... 

i 

All  that  procedure. 

Treat  your  dismissal  as  you  would  an  at- 
mospheric phenomenon. 


A  conversation  at  a  conference  of  doctors. 
First  doctor:  "All  diseases  can  be  cured  by 
salt."  Second  doctor,  military:  "Every 
disease  can  be  cured  by  prescribing  no  salt." 
The  first  points  to  his  wife,  the  second  to  his 
daughter. 

The  mother  has  ideals,  the  father  too; 
they  delivered  lectures;  they  built  schools, 

[69] 


museums,  etc.  They  grow  rich.  And  their 
children  are  most  ordinary;  spend  money, 
gamble  on  the  Stock  Exchange. 

N.  married  a  German  when  she  was  seven- 
teen. He  took  her  to  live  in  Berlin.  At 
forty  she  became  a  widow  and  by  that  time 
spoke  Russian  badly  and  German  badly. 

The  husband  and  wife  loved  having  vis- 
itors, because,  when  there  were  no  visitors 
they  quarreled. 

It  is  an  absurdity !     It  is  an  anachronism ! 

"Shut  the  window!  You  are  perspiring! 
Put  on  an  overcoat !     Put  on  goloshes !" 

If  you  wish  to  have  little  spare  time,  do 
nothing. 

On  a  Sunday  morning  in  summer  is  heard 
the  rumble  of  a  carriage — ^people  driving  to 
mass. 

For  the  first  time  in  her  life  a  man  kissed 

[70] 


her  hand ;  it  was  too  much  for  her,  it  turned 
her  head. 

What  wonderful  names:  the  little  tears 
of  Our  Lady,  warbler,  crows-eyes.^ 

A  government  forest  officer  with  shoulder 
straps,  who  has  never  seen  a  forest. 

A  gentleman  owns  a  villa  near  Mentone; 
he  bought  it  out  of  the  proceeds  of  the  sale 
of  his  estate  in  the  Tula  province.  I  saw 
him  in  Kharkhov  to  which  he  had  come  on 
business;  he  gambled  away  the  villa  at  cards 
and  became  a  railway  clerk;  after  that  he 
died. 

At  supper  he  noticed  a  pretty  woman  and 
choked;  a  little  later  he  caught  sight  of  an- 
other pretty  woman  and  choked  again,  so 
that  he  did  not  eat  his  supper — there  were  a 
lot  of  pretty  women. 

A  doctor,  recently  qualified,  supervises  the 
food  in  a  restaurant.     "The  food  is  under 

*  The  names  of  flowers. 

[71] 


the  special  supervision  of  a  doctor/'  He 
copies  out  the  chemical  composition  of  the 
mineral  water;  the  students  believe  him — 
and  all  is  well. 

He  did  not  eat,  he  partook  of  food. 

A  man,  married  to  an  actress,  during  a 
performance  of  a  play  in  which  his  wife  was 
acting,  sat  in  a  box,  with  beaming  face,  and 
from  time  to  time  got  up  and  bowed  to  the 
audience. 

Dinner  at  Count  O.  D.'s.  Fat  lazy  foot- 
men; tasteless  cutlets;  a  feeling  that  a  lot  of 
money  is  being  spent,  that  the  situation  is 
hopeless,  and  that  it  is  impossible  to  change 
the  course  of  things. 

A  district  doctor:  "What  other  damned 
creature  but  a  doctor  would  have  to  go  out 
in  such  weather*?" — he  is  proud  of  it, 
grumbles  about  it  to  every  one,  and  is  proud 
to  think  that  his  work  is  so  troublesome;  he 
does  not  drink  and  often  sends  articles  to 
medical  journals  that  do  not  publish  them. 

[72] 


When  N.  married  her  husband,  he  was 
junior  Public  Prosecutor;  he  became  judge 
of  the  High  Court  and  then  judge  of  the 
Court  of  Appeals;  he  is  an  average  uninter- 
esting man.  N.  loves  her  husband  very 
much.  She  loves  him  to  the  grave,  writes 
him  meek  and  touching  letters  when  she 
hears  of  his  unfaithfulness,  and  dies  with  a 
touching  expression  of  love  on  her  lips. 
Evidently  she  loved,  not  her  husband,  but 
some  one  else,  superior,  beautiful,  non-exist- 
ent, and  she  lavished  that  love  upon  her  hus- 
band. And  after  her  death  footsteps  could 
be  heard  in  her  house. 

They  are  members  of  a  temperance  society 
and  now  and  again  take  a  glass  of  wine. 

They  say:  "In  the  long  run  truth  will 
triumph;"  but  it  is  untrue. 

A  clever  man  says :  "This  is  a  lie,  but  since 
the  people  can  not  do  without  the  lie,  since 
it  has  the  sanction  of  history,  it  is  dangerous 
to  root  it  out  all  at  once ;  let  it  go  on  for  the 
time  being  but   with   certain  corrections." 

[73] 


But  the  genius  says:  "This  is  a  lie,  therefore 


It  must  not  exist." 


Marie  Ivanovna  Kladovaya. 

A  schoolboy  with  mustaches,  in  order  to 
show  off,  limps  with  one  leg. 

A  writer  of  no  talent,  who  has  been  writ- 
ing for  a  long  time,  with  his  air  of  import- 
ance reminds  one  of  a  high  priest. 

Mr.  N.  and  Miss  Z.  in  the  city  of  X. 
Both  clever,  educated,  of  radical  views,  and 
both  working  for  the  good  of  their  fellow 
men,  but  both  hardly  know  each  other  and 
in  conversation  always  rail  at  each  other  in 
order  to  please  the  stupid  and  coarse  crowd. 

He  flourished  his  hand  as  if  he  were  going 
to  seize  him  by  the  hair  and  said:  "YoU 
won't  escape  by  that  there  trick." 

N.  has  never  been  in  the  country  and 
thinks  that  in  the  winter  country  people  use 
skis.     "How  I  would  enjoy  ski-ing  now!" 

[74] 


Madam  N.,  who  sells  herself,  says  to  each 
man  who  has  her:  "I  love  you  because  you 
are  not  like  the  rest." 

An  intellectual  woman,  or  rather  a  woman 
who  belongs  to  an  intellectual  circle,  excels 
in  deceit. 

N.  struggled  all  his  life  investigating  a 
disease  and  studying  its  bacilli;  he  devoted 
his  whole  life  to  the  struggle,  expended  on  it 
all  his  powers,  and  suddenly  just  before  his 
death  it  turned  out  that  the  disease  ik  not  in 
the  least  infectious  or  dangerous. 

A  theatrical  manager,  lying  in  bed,  read  a 
new  play.  He  read  three  or  four  pages  and 
then  in  irritation  threw  the  play  on  to  the 
floor,  put  out  the  candle,  and  drew  the  bed- 
clothes over  him ;  a  little  later,  after  thinking 
over  it,  he  took  the  play  up  again  and  began 
to  read  it;  then,  getting  angry  with  the  un- 
inspired tedious  work,  he  again  threw  it  on 
the  floor  and  put  out  the  candle.  A  little 
later  he  once  more  took  up  the  play  and  read 
it,  then  he  produced  it  and  it  was  a  failure. 

[75] 


N.,  heavy,  morose,  gloomy,  says :  "I  love 
a  joke,  I  am  always  joking." 

The  wife  writes ;  the  husband  does  not  like 
her  writing,  but  out  of  delicacy  says  nothing 
and  suffers  all  his  life. 

The  fate  of  an  actress:  the  beginning — 2, 
well-to-do  family  in  Kertch,  life  dull  and 
empty;  the  stage,  virtue,  passionate  love, 
then  lovers;  the  end:  unsuccessful  attempt 
to  poison  herself,  then  Kertch,  life  at  her  fat 
uncle's  house,  the  delight  of  being  left  alone. 
Experience  shows  that  an  artist  must  dis- 
pense with  wine,  marriage,  pregnancy.  The 
stage  will  become  art  only  in  the  future,  now 
it  is  only  struggling  for  the  future. 

(Angrily  and  sententiously)  "Why  don't 
you  give  me  your  wife's  letters  to  read*? 
Aren't  we  relations?" 

Lord,  don't  allow  me  to  condemn  or  to 
speak  of  what  I  do  not  know  or  do  not  under- 
stand. 

Why  do  people  describe  only  the  weak, 

[76] 


surly  and  frail  as  sinners^  And  every  one 
when  he  advises  others  to  describe  only  the 
strong,  healthy,  and  interesting,  means  him- 
self. 

For  a  play :  a  character  always  lying  with- 
out rhyme  or  reason. 

Sexton  Catacombov. 

N.  N.,  a  litterateur,  critic,  plausible,  self- 
confident,  very  liberal  minded,  talks  about 
poetry;  condescendingly  agrees  with  one — 
and  I  see  that  he  is  a  man  absolutely  without 
talent  (I  haven't  read  him).  Some  one 
suggests  going  to  Ai-Petri.  I  say  that  it  is 
going  to  rain,  but  we  set  out.  The  road  is 
muddy,  it  rains;  the  critic  sits  next  to  me,  I 
feel  his  lack  of  talent.  He  is  wooed  and 
made  a  fuss  of  as  if  he  were  a  bishop.  And 
when  it  cleared  up,  I  went  back  on  foot. 
How  easily  people  deceive  themselves,  how 
they  love  prophets  and  soothsayers;  what  a 
herd  it  is!  Another  person  went  with  us,  a 
Councillor  of  State,  middle-aged,  silent  be- 
cause he  thinks  he  is  right  and  despises  the 
critic,  because  he  too  is  without  talent.     A 

[77] 


girl  afraid  to  smile  because  she  is  among 
clever  people. 

Alexey  Ivanitch  Prokhladitelny  (refresh- 
ing) or  Doushespasitelny  (soul-saving).  A 
girl :  "I  would  marry  him,  but  am  afraid  of 
the  name — Madam  Refreshing." 

A  dream  of  a  keeper  in  the  zoological  gar- 
dens. He  dreams  that  there  was  presented 
to  the  2^0  first  a  marmot,  then  an  emu,  then 
a  vulture,  then  a  she-goat,  then  another  emu ; 
the  presentations  are  made  without  end  and 
the  Zoo  is  crowded  out — the  keeper  wakes  up 
in  horror  wet  with  perspiration. 

"To  harness  slowly  but  drive  rapidly  is  in 
the  nature  of  this  people,"  said  Bismarck. 

When  an  actor  has  money,  he  doesn't 
send  letters  but  telegrams. 

With  insects,  out  of  the  caterpillar  comes 
the  butterfly;  with  mankind  it  is  the  other 
way  round,  out  of  the  butterfly  comes  the 
caterpillar.^ 

iThere  is  a  play  on  wards  here,  the  Russian  word  for 
butterfly  also  means  a  woman. 

[78] 


The  dogs  in  the  house  became  attached  not 
to  their  masters  who  fed  and  fondled  them, 
but  to  the  cook,  a  foreigner,  who  beat  them. 

Sophie  was  afraid  that  her  dog  might 
catch  cold,  because  of  the  draught. 

The  soil  is  so  good,  that,  were  you  to  plant 
a  shaft,  in  a  year's  time  a  cart  would  grow 
out  of  it. 

X.  and  Z.,  very  well  educated  and  of 
radical  views,  married.  In  the  evening  they 
talked  together  pleasantly,  then  quarreled, 
then  came  to  blows.  In  the  morning  both 
are  ashamed  and  surprised,  they  think  that 
it  must  have  been  the  result  of  some  ex- 
ceptional state  of  their  nerves.  Next  night 
again  a  quarrel  and  blows.  And  so  every 
night  until  at  last  they  realize  that  they  are 
not  at  all  educated,  but  savage,  just  like  the 
majority  of  people. 

A  play:  in  order  to  avoid  having  visitors, 
Z.  pretends  to  be  a  regular  tippler,  although 
he  drinks  nothing. 

[79] 


When  children  appear  on  the  scene,  then 
we  justify  all  our  weaknesses,  our  compro- 
mises, and  our  snobbery,  by  saying:  "It's 
for  the  children's  sake." 

Count,  I  am  going  away  to  Mordegundia. 
(A  land  of  horrible  faces.) 

Barbara  Nedotyopin. 

Z.,  an  engineer  or  doctor,  went  on  a  visit 
to  his  uncle,  an  editor ;  he  became  interested, 
began  to  go  there  frequently;  then  became 
a  contributor  to  the  paper,  little  by  little 
gave  up  his  profession;  one  night  he  came 
out  of  the  newspaper  office,  remembered, 
and  seized  his  head  in  his  hands — "all  is 
lost!"  He  began  to  go  gray.  Then  it 
became  a  habit,  he  was  quite  white  now 
and  flabby,  an  editor,  respectable  but 
obscure. 

A  Privy  Councillor,  an  old  man,  looking 
at  his  children,  became  a  radical  himself. 

A  newspaper:  "Cracknel." 

[8ol 


The  clown  in  the  circus — that  is  talent, 
and  the  waiter  in  the  frock  coat  speaking  to 
him — that  is  the  crowd;  the  waiter  with  an 
ironical  smile  on  his  face. 

Auntie  from  Novozybkov. 

He  has  a  rarefaction  of  the  brain  and  his 
brains  have  leaked  into  his  ears. 

"What?  Writers?  If  you  like,  for  a 
shilling  I'll  make  a  writer  of  you." 

Instead  of  translator,  contractor. 

An  actress,  forty  years  old,  ugly,  ate  a 
partridge  for  dinner,  and  I  felt  sorry  for  the 
partridge,  for  it  occurred  to  me  that  in  its 
life  it  had  been  more  talented,  more  sensible, 
and  more  honest  than  that  actress. 

The  doctor  said  to  me :  "If,"  says  he,  "your 
constitution  holds  out,  drink  to  your  heart's 
content."    (Gorbunov.) 

Carl  Kremertartarlau. 

[81] 


A  field  with  a  distant  view,  one  tiny  birch 
tree.  The  inscription  under  the  picture: 
loneliness. 

The  guests  had  gone:  they  had  played 
cards  and  everything  was  in  disorder:  to- 
bacco smoke,  scraps  of  paper,  and  chiefly — 
the  dawn  and  memories. 

Better  to  perish  from  fools  than  to  accept 
praises  from  them. 

Why  do  trees  grow  and  so  luxuriantly, 
when  the  owners  are  dead? 

The  character  keeps  a  library,  but  he  is 
always  away  visiting;  there  are  no  readers. 

Life  seems  great,  enormous,  and  yet  one 
sits  on  one's  piatachok.  ^ 

Zolotonosha*?  ^  There  is  no  such  town! 
No! 

1  The  word  means  five  kopecks  and  also  a  pig's  snout. 

2  The   name    of    a    Russjian    town,    meaning   literally 
"Gold-carrier." 

[82] 


When  he  laughs,  he  shows  his  teeth  and 

gums. 

He  loved  the  sort  of  literature  which  did 
not  upset  him,  Schiller,  Homer,  etc. 

N.,  a  teacher,  on  her  way  home  in  the 
evening  was  told  by  her  friend  that  X.  had 
fallen  in  love  with  her,  N.,  and  wanted  to 
propose.  N.,  ungainly,  who  had  never  be- 
fore thought  of  marriage,  when  she  got 
home,  sat  for  a  long  time  trembling  with 
fear,  could  not  sleep,  cried,  and  towards 
morning  fell  in  love  with  X.;  next  day  she 
heard  that  the  whole  thing  was  a  supposition 
on  the  part  of  her  friend  and  that  X.  was 
going  to  marry  not  her  but  Y. 

He  had  a  liaison  with  a  woman  of  forty- 
five  after  which  he  began  to  write  ghost 
stories. 

I  dreamt  that  I  was  in  India  and  that 
one  of  the  local  princes  presented  me  with 
an  elephant,  two  elephants  even.     I  was  so 

[83] 


worried  about  the  elephant  that  I  woke  up. 

An  old  man  of  eighty  says  to  another  old 
man  of  sixty:  "You  ought  to  be  ashamed, 
young  man." 

When  they  sang  in  church,  **Now  is  the 
beginning  of  our  salvation,"  he  ate  glavizna 
at  home ;  on  the  day  of  St.  John  the  Baptist 
he  ate  no  food  that  was  circular  and  flogged 
his  children.^ 

A  journalist  wrote  lies  in  the  newspaper, 
but  he  thought  he  was  writing  the  truth. 

If  you  are  afraid  of  loneliness,  do  not 
marry. 

He  himself  is  rich,  but  his  mother  is  in 
the  workhouse. 

He  married,  furnished  a  house,  bought  a 
writing-table,  got  everything  in  order,  but 
found  he  had  nothing  to  write. 

1  Glavizna  in  Russian  is  the  name  of  a  fish  and  also 
means  beginning;  the  root  of  the  verbs  "to  behead"  and 
"to  flog"  are  the  same. 

[84] 


Faust:  "What  you  don't  know  is  just  what 
you  want;  what  you  know  is  what  you  can't 
use.'' 


Although  you  may  tell  lies,  people  will 
believe  you,  if  only  you  speak  with 
authority. 

As  I  shall  lie  in  the  grave  alone,  so  in 
fact  I  live  alone. 

A   German:   "Lord  have  mercy  on  us, 

grieshniki''  ^ 

''O  my  dear  little  pimple!"  said  the 
bride  tenderly.  The  bridegroom  thought 
for  a  while,  then  felt  hurt — they  parted. 

They  were  mineral  water  bottles  with 
preserved  cherries  in  them. 

An  actress  who  spoilt  all  her  parts  by 
very  bad  acting —  and  this  continued  all 
her  life  long  until  she  died.     Nobody  liked 

1  Grieshniki      means      "sinners,"      but      sounds      like 
grietchnieviki   which   means    "buckwheat   cakes." 

[85] 


her;  she  ruined  all  the  best  parts;  and  yet 
she  went  on  acting  until  she  was  seventy. 

He  alone  is  all  right  and  can  repent  who 
feels  himself  to  be  wrong. 

The  archdeacon  curses  the  "doubters," 
and  they  stand  in  the  choir  and  sing  anath- 
ema to  themselves  (Skitalez). 

He  imagined  that  his  wife  lay  with  her 
legs  cut  off  and  that  he  nursed  her  in  order 
to  save  his  soul.  .  .  . 

Madame  Snuffley. 

The  black-beetles  have  left  the  house;  the 
house  will  be  burnt  down. 


"Dmitri,  the  Pretender,  and  Actors." 
"Turgenev  and  the  Tigers."  Articles  like 
that  can  be  and  are  written. 

A  title:  Lemon  Peel. 

I  am  your  legitimate  husband. 
[86] 


An  abortion,  because  while  bathing  a  wave 
struck  her,  a  wave  of  the  ocean;  because  of 
the  eruption  of  Vesuvius. 

It  seems  to  me :  the  sea  and  myself — and 
nothing  else. 

Education:  his  three-year-old  son  wore 
a  black  frock-coat,  boots,  and  waistcoat. 

With  pride:  "Pm  not  of  Yuriev,  but  of 
Dorpat  University."  ^ 

His  beard  looked  like  the  tail  of  a  fish. 

A  Jew,  Ziptchik. 

A  girl,  when  she  giggles,  makes  noises  as 
if  she  were  putting  her  head  in  cold  water. 

"Mamma,  what  is  a  thunderbolt  maHe 
of?" 

On  the  estate  there  is  a  bad  smell,  and 
bad  taste;  the  trees  are  planted  anyhow, 

^  Yuriev  is  the  Russian  name  of  the  town  Doroat 


stupidly;  and  away  in  a  remote  comer  the 
lodge-keeper's  wife  all  day  long  washes 
the  guest's  linen — and  nobody  sees  her;  and 
the  owners  are  allowed  to  talk  away  whole 
days  about  their  rights  and  their  nobility. 

She  fed  her  dog  on  the  best  caviare. 

Our  self-esteem  and  conceit  are  European, 
but  our  culture  and  actions  are  Asiatic. 

A  black  dog — ^he  looks   as   if  he  were 
wearing  goloshes. 

A  Russian's  only  hope — to  win  two  him- 
dred  thousand  roubles  in  a  lottery. 

She  is  wicked,  but  she  taught  her  children 
good. 

Every  one  has  something  to  hide. 

The  title  of  N.'s  story:  The  Eower  of 
Harmonies. 

O  how  nice  it  would  be  if  bachelors  or 
widowers  were  appointed  Governors. 
[88] 


A  Moscow  actress  never  in  her  life  saw 
a  turkey-hen. 

On  the  lips  of  the  old  I  hear  either  stu- 
pidity or  malice. 

"Mamma,  Pete  did  not  say  his  prayers." 
Fete  is  woken  up,  he  says  his  prayers,  cries, 
then  lies  down  and  shakes  his  fist  at  the 
child  who  made  the  complaint. 

He  imagined  that  only  doctors  could  say 
whether  it  is  male  or  female. 

One  became  a  priest,  the  other  a  Dukho- 
bor,  the  third  a  philosopher,  and  in  each  case 
instinctively  because  no  one  wants  really  to 
work  with  bent  back  from  morning  to  night. 

A  passion  for  the  word  uterine:  my 
uterine  brother,  my  uterine  wife,  my  uterine 
brother-in-law,  etc. 

To  Doctor  N.,  an  illegitimate  child,  who 
has  never  lived  with  his  father  and  knew  him 
very  little,  his  bosom  friend  Z.,  says  with 

[89] 


agitation:  "You  see,  the  fact  of  the  matter 
is  that  your  father  misses  you  very  much, 
he  is  ill  and  wants  to  have  a  look  at  you." 
The  father  keeps  "Switzerland,"  furnished 
apartments.  He  takes  the  fried  fish  out  of 
the  dish  with  his  hands  and  only  afterwards 
uses  a  fork.  The  vodka  smells  rank.  N. 
went,  looked  about  him,  had  dinner — ^his 
only  feeling  that  that  fat  peasant,  with  the 
grizzled  beard,  should  sell  such  filth.  But 
once,  when  passing  the  house  at  midnight, 
he  looked  in  at  the  window:  his  father  was 
sitting  with  bent  back  reading  a  book.  He 
recognized  himself  and  his  own  manners. 

As  stupid  as  a  gray  gelding. 

They  teased  the  girl  with  castor  oil,  and 
therefore  she  did  not  marry. 

N.  all  his  life  used  to  write  abusive  letters 
to  famous  singers,  actors,  and  authors :  "You 
think,  you  scamp,  .  .  .'' — without  signing 
his  name. 

When  the  man  who  carried  the  torch  at 
funerals  came  out  in  his  three-cornered  hat, 

[90] 


his  frock  coat  with  laces  and  stripes,  she  fell 
in  love  with  him. 

A  sparkling,  joyous  nature,  a  kind  of 
living  protest  against  grumblers;  he  is  fat 
and  healthy,  eats  a  great  deal,  every 
one  likes  him  but  only  because  they  are 
afraid  of  the  grumblers;  he  is  a  nobody,  a 
Ham,  only  eats  and  laughs  loud,  and  that's 
all ;  when  he  dies,  every  one  sees  that  he  had 
done  nothing,  that  they  had  mistaken  him 
for  some  one  else. 

After  the  inspection  of  the  building,  the 
Commission,  which  was  bribed,  lunched 
heartily,  and  it  was  precisely  a  funeral  feast 
over  honesty. 

He  who  tells  lies  is  dirty. 

At  three  o'clock  in  the  morning  they  wake 
him:  he  has  to  go  to  his  job  at  the  railway 
station,  and  so  every  day  for  the  last  four- 
teen years. 

A  lady  grumbles :  "I  write  to  my  son  that 
he  should  change  his  linen  every  Saturday. 

[91] 


He  replies:  Why  SaturSay,  not  Monday?' 
I  answer :  Well,  all  right,  let  it  be  Monday.' 
And  he :  Why  Monday,  not  Tuesday?'  He 
is  a  nice  honest  man,  but  I  get  worried  by 
him," 

A  clever  man  loves  learning  but  is  a  fool 
at  teaching. 

The  sermons  of  priests,  archimandrites, 
and  bishops  are  wonderfully  like  one  an- 
other. 

One  remembers  the  arguments  about  the 
brotherhood  of  man,  public  good,  and  work 
for  the  people,  but  really  there  were  no  such 
arguments,  one  only  drank  at  the  University. 
They  write :  "One  feels  ashamed  of  the  men 
with  University  degrees  who  once  fought 
for  human  rights  and  freedon  of  religion  and 
conscience" — ^but  they  never  fought. 

Every  day  after  dinner  the  husband 
threatens  his  wife  that  he  will  become  a 
monk,  and  the  wife  cries. 

Mordokhvostov. 

[92] 


Husband  and  wife  have  lived  together  and 
quarreled  for  eighteen  years.  At  last  he 
makes  a  confession,  which  was  in  fact  un- 
true, of  having  been  false  to  her,  and  they 
part  to  his  great  pleasure  and  to  the  wrath 
of  the  whole  town. 

A  useless  thing,  an  album  with  forgotten, 
uninteresting  photographs,  lies  in  the  corner 
on  a  chair;  it  has  been  lying  there  for  the 
last  twenty  years  and  no  one  makes  up  his 
mind  to  throw  it  away. 

N.  tells  how  forty  years  ago  X.,  a  won- 
derful and  extraordinary  man,  had  saved  the 
lives  of  five  people,  and  N.  feels  it  strange 
that  every  one  listened  with  indifference, 
that  the  history  of  X.  is  already  forgotten, 
uninteresting.  .  .  . 

They  fell  upon  the  soft  caviare  greedily, 
and  devoured  it  in  a  minute. 

In  the  middle  of  a  serious  conversation 
he  says  to  his  little  son:  "Button  up  your 
trousers." 

[93] 


Man  will  only  become  better  when  you 
make  him  see  what  he  is  like. 

Dove-colored  face. 

The  squire  feeds  his  pigeons,  canaries, 
and  fowls  on  pepper,  acids,  and  all  kinds  of 
rubbish  in  order  that  the  birds  may  change 
their  color — and  that  is  his  sole  occupation: 
he  boasts  of  it  to  every  visitor. 

They  invited  a  famous  singer  to  recite 
the  Acts  of  the  Apostles  at  the  wedding;  he 
recited  it,  but  they  have  not  paid  his  fee. 

For  a  farce:  I  have  a  friend  by  name 
Krivomordy  (crooked  face)  and  he's  all 
right.  Not  crooked  leg  or  crooked  arm  but 
crooked  face:  he  was  married  and  his  wife 
loved  him. 

N.  drank  milk  every  Hay,  and  every  time 
he  put  a  fly  in  the  glass  and  then,  with  the 
air  of  a  victim,  asked  the  old  butler:  "What's 
that?"  He  could  not  live  a  single  day  with- 
out that. 

[94] 


She  is  surly  and  smells  of  a  vapor  bath. 

N.  learned  of  his  wife's  adultery.  He  is 
indignant,  distressed,  but  hesitates  and  keeps 
silent.  He  keeps  silence  and  ends  by  bor- 
rowing money  from  Z.,  the  lover,  and  con- 
tinues to  consider  himself  an  honest  man. 

When  I  stop  drinking  tea  and  eating  bread 
and  butter,  I  say:  "I  have  had  enough." 
But  when  I  stop  reading  poems  or  novels, 
I  say :  "No  more  of  that,  no  more  of  that." 

A  solicitor  lends  money  at  a  high  rate  of 
interest,  and  justifies  himself  because  he  is 
leaving  everything  to  the  University  of 
Moscow. 

A  little  sexton,  with  radical  views:  "Now- 
adays our  fellows  crawl  out  from  all  sorts 
of  unexpected  holes." 

The  squire  N.  always  quarrels  with  his 
neighbors  who  are  Molokans  ^ ;  he  goes  to 
court,  abuses  and  curses  them;  but  when  at 

1  Molokans  are  a  religious  sect  in  Russia. 

[95] 


last  they  leave,  he  feels  there  is  an  empty 
place;  he  ages  rapidly  and  pines  away. 

Mordukhanov. 

With  N.  and  his  wife  there  lives  the 
wife's  brother,  a  lachrymose  young  man  who 
at  one  time  steals,  at  another  tells  lies,  at 
another  attempts  suicide;  N.  and  his  wife 
do  not  know  what  to  do,  they  are  afraid  to 
turn  him  out  because  he  might  kill  himself; 
they  would  like  to  turn  him  out,  but  they 
(do  not  know  how  to  manage  it.  For  forging 
a  bill  he  gets  into  prison,  and  N.  and  his 
wife  feel  that  they  are  to  blame;  they  cry, 
grieve.  She  died  from  grief;  he  too  died 
some  time  later  and  everything  was  left  to 
the  brother  who  squandered  it  and  got  into 
prison  again. 

Suppose  I  had  to  marry  a  woman  and 
live  in  her  house,  I  would  run  away  in  two 
days,  but  a  woman  gets  used  so  quickly  to 
her  husband's  house,  as  though  she  had  been 
born  there. 


[96] 


Well,  you  are  a  Councillor;  but  whom  do 
you  counsel?  God  forbid  that  any  one 
should  listen  to  your  counsels. 

The  little  town  of  Torjok.  A  sitting  of 
the  town  council.  Subject:  the  raising  of 
the  rates.  Decision:  to  invite  the  Pope  to 
settle  down  in  Torjok — to  choose  it  as  his 
residence. 

S.'s  logic:  I  am  for  religious  toleration, 
but  against  religious  freedom;  one  cannot 
allow  what  is  not  in  the  strict  sense  ortho- 
dox. 

St.  Piony  and  Epinach.  ii  March,  Pupli 
13  m. 

Poetry  anH  works  of  art  contain  not  what 
is  needed  but  what  people  desire;  they  do 
not  go  further  than  the  crowd  and  they  ex- 
press only  what  the  best  in  the  crowd  desire. 

A  little  man  is  very  cautious;  he  sends 
even  letters  of  congratulation  by  registered 
post  in  order  to  get  a  receipt. 

[97] 


Russia  is  an  enormous  plain  across  which 
wander  mischievous  men. 

Platonida  Ivanovna. 

If  you  are  politically  sound,  that  is  enough 
for  you  to  be  considered  a  perfectly  satis- 
factory citizen ;  the  same  thing  with  radicals, 
to  be  politically  unsound  is  enough,  every- 
thing else  will  be  ignored. 

A  man  who  when  he  fails  opens  his  eyes 
wide. 

Ziuzikov. 

A  Coimcillor  of  State,  a  respectable  man ; 
it  suddenly  comes  out  that  he  has  secretly 
kept  a  brothel. 

N.  has  written  a  good  play ;  no  one  praises 
him  or  is  pleased;  they  all  say:  "We'll  see 
what  you  write  next." 

The  more  important  people  came  in  by 

[98] 


the  front  door,  the  simple  folk  by  the  back 
door. 

He :  "And  in  our  town  there  lived  a  man 
whose  name  was  Kishmish  (raisin).  He 
called  himself  Kishmish,  but  every  one  knew 
that  he  was  Kishmish." 

She  (after  some  thought)  :  "How  annoy- 
ing ...  if  only  his  name  had  been  Sultana, 
but  Kishmish  I  .  .  /' 

Blagovospitanny. 

Most  honored  Iv-Iv-itch! 

How  intolerable  people  are  sometimes 
who  are  happy  and  successful  in  everything. 

They  begin  gossiping  that  N.  is  living 
with  Z. ;  little  by  little  an  atmosphere  is 
created  in  which  a  liaison  of  N.  and  Z.  be- 
comes inevitable. 

When  the  locust  was  a  plague,  I  wrote 
against  the  locust  and  enchanted  every  one, 
I  was  rich  and  famous;  but  now,  when  the 

[99] 


locust  has  long  ago  disappeared  and  is  for- 
gotten, I  am  mergeH  in  the  crowd,  forgotten, 
and  not  wanted. 

Merrily,  joyfully:  "I  have  the  honor  to 
introduce  you  to  I  v.  I  v.  Izgoyev,  my  wife's 
lover." 

Everywhere  on  the  estate  are  notices: 
"Trespassers  will  be  prosecuted,"  "Keep 
off  the  flowers,"  etc. 

In  the  great  house  is  a  fine  library  which 
is  talked  about  but  is  never  used;  they  give 
you  watery  coffee  which  you  cannot  drink; 
the  garden  is  tasteless  with  no  flowers  in  it 
— and  they  pretend  that  all  this  is  some- 
thing Tolstoian. 

He  learnt  Swedish  in  order  to  study  Ibsen, 
spent  a  lot  of  time  and  trouble,  and  suddenly 
realized  that  Ibsen  is  not  important;  he 
could  not  conceive  what  use  he  could  now 
make  of  the  Swedish  language.  ^ 

1  Ibsen  wrote  in  Norwegian  of  course.  Responding  to 
a  request  for  his  interpretation  of  this  curious  paragraph. 
Mr.  Koteliansky  writes: 

"Chekhov    had    a    very    high   opinion    of    Ibsen;    the 

[loo] 


N.  makes  a  living  by  exterminating  bugs; 
and  for  the  purposes  of  his  trade  he  reads 

the  works  of .     If  in  "The  Cossacks," 

bugs  are  not  mentioned,  it  means  that  "The 
Cossacks"  is  a  bad  book. 

Man  is  what  he  believes. 

A  clever  girl:  "I  cannot  pretend  ...  I 
never  tell  a  lie  ...  I  have  principles" — 
and  all  the  time  "I .  .  .  I .  .  .  I ,  .  ." 

N.  is  angry  with  his  wife  who  is  an  actress, 
and   without   her   knowledge   gets   abusive 

paragraph,  I  am  sure,  is  by  no  meani  aimed  at  Ibsen. 
Most  probably  the  paragraph,  as  well  as  many  others  in 
the  Notes,  is  something  which  C.  either  personally  or  in- 
directly heard  someone  say.  You  will  see  that  Kuprin 
["Reminiscences  of  Chekhov,"  by  Gorky,  Kuprin  and 
Bunin,  New  York:  Huebsch.]  told  C.  the  anecdote  about 
the  actor  whose  wife  asked  him  to  whistle  a  melody  on 
the  stage  during  a  rehearsal.  In  C.'s  Notes  you  have  that 
anecdote,  somewhat  shortened  and  the  names  changed, 
without  mentioning  the  source. 

"The  reader,  on  the  whole,  may  puzzle  his  head  over 
many  paragraphs  in  the  Notes,  but  he  will  hardly  find 
explanations  each  time.  What  the  reader  hat  to 
remember  is  that  the  Notes  are  material  used  by  C.  in 
his  creative  activity  and  as  such  it  throws  a  great  deal 
of  light  on  C.'s  mentality  and  process  of  working." 

[lOl] 


criticisms  published  about  her  in  the  news- 
papers. 

A  nobleman  boasts  "This  house  of  mine 
was  built  in  the  time  of  Dmitry  Donskoy." 

"Your  Worship,  he  called  my  dog  a  bad 
name :  'son  of  a  bitch.'  " 

The  snow  fell  and  did  not  lie  on  the 
ground  reddened  with  blood. 

He  left  everything  to  charity,  so  that 
nothing  should  go  to  his  relations  and  chil- 
dren, whom  he  hated. 

A  very  amorous  man;  he  is  no  sooner 
introduced  to  a  girl  than  he  becomes  a  he- 
goat. 

A  nobleman  Drekoliev. 

I  dread  the  idea  that  a  chamberlain  will 
be  present  at  the  opening  of  my  petition. 

He  was  a  rationalist,  but  he  had  to  confess 
that  he  liked  the  ringing  of  church  bells. 
[102] 


The  father  a  famous  general,  nice  pictures, 
expensive  furniture;  he  died;  the  daughters 
received  a  good  education,  but  are  slovenly, 
read  little,  ride,  and  are  dull. 

They  are  honest  and  truthful  so  long  as  it 
is  unnecessary. 

A  rich  merchant  would  like  to  have  a 
shower  bath  in  his  W.  C. 

In  the  early  morning  they  ate  okroshka,  ^ 

"If  you  lose  this  talisman,"  said  grand- 
mother, "you  will  die."  And  suddenly  I 
lost  it,  tortured  myself,  was  afraid  that  I 
would  die.  And  now,  imagine,  a  miracle 
happened:  I  found  it  and  continued  to  live. 

Everybody  goes  to  the  theatre  to  see  my 
play,  to  learn  something  instantly  from  it, 
to  make  some  sort  of  profit,  and  I  tell  you: 
I  have  not  the  time  to  bother  about  that 
canaille. 

^  A  cold  dish  composed  of  cider  and  hash. 


[103] 


The  people  hate  and  despise  everything 
new  and  useful ;  when  there  was  cholera,  they 
hated  and  killed  the  doctors  and  they  love 
vodka;  by  the  people's  love  or  hatred  one  can 
estimate  the  value  of  what  they  love  or  hate. 

Looking  out  of  the  window  at  the  corpse 
which  is  being  borne  to  the  cemetery:  "You 
are  dead,  you  are  being  carried  to  the  cem- 
etery, and  I  will  go  and  have  my  breakfast." 

A  Tchech  Vtitchka. 

A  man,  forty  years  old,  married  a  girl  of 
twenty-two  who  read  only  the  very  latest 
writers,  wore  green  ribbons,  slept  on  yellow 
pillows,  and  believed  in  her  taste  and  her 
opinions  as  if  they  were  law ;  she  is  nice,  not 
silly,  and  gentle,  but  he  separates  from  her. 

When  one  longs  for  a  drink,  it  seems  as 
though  one  could  drink  a  whole  ocean — that 
is  faith;  but  when  one  begins  to  drink,  one 
can  only  drink  altogether  two  glasses — that 
is  science. 

For  a  farce :    Fildekosov,  Poprygunov. 
[104] 


In  former  times  a  nice  man,  with  prin- 
ciples, who  wanted  to  be  respected,  would  try 
to  become  a  general  or  priest,  but  now  he 
goes  in  for  being  a  writer,  professor.  .  .  . 

There  is  nothing  which  history  will  not 
justify. 

Zievoulia.* 

The  crying  of  a  nice  child  is  ugly;  so  in 
bad  verses  you  may  recognize  that  the  author 
is  a  nice  man. 

If  you  wish  women  to  love  you,  be  orig- 
inal; I  know  a  man  who  used  to  wear  felt 
boots  summer  and  winter,  and  women  fell  in 
love  with  him. 

I  arrive  at  Yalta.  Every  room  is  en- 
gaged. I  go  to  the  "Italy" — not  a  room 
available.  "What  about  my  room  number 
35" — "It  is  engaged."  A  lady.  They  say: 
"Would  you  like  to  stay  with  this  lady*? 

1 A  name  or  word  invented  by  Chekhov  meaning  "One 
who  yawns  for  a  long  time  with  pleasure." 

[105] 


The  lady  has  no  objection."  I  stay  in  her 
room.  Conversation.  Evening.  The  Tartar 
guide  comes  in.  My  ears  are  stopped,  my 
eyes  blindfolded;  I  sit  and  see  nothing  and 
hear  nothing.  .  .  . 


A  young  lady  complains:  "My  poor 
brother  gets  such  a  small  salary — only  seven 
thousand !" 

She:  "I  see  only  one  thing  now:  you  have 
a  large  mouth !  A  large  mouth !  An  enor- 
mous mouth !" 

The  horse  is  a  useless  and  pernicious  ani- 
mal ;  a  great  deal  of  land  has  to  be  tilled  for 
it,  it  accustoms  man  not  to  employ  his  own 
muscles,  it  is  often  an  object  of  luxury;  it 
makes  man  effeminate.  For  the  future  not 
a  single  horse. 

N.  a  singer;  speaks  to  nobody,  his  throat 
muffled  up — he  takes  care  of  his  voice,  but 
no  one  has  ever  heard  him  sing. 


[106] 


About  absolutely  everything:  "What's  the 
good  of  that*?     It's  useless!'' 

He  wears  felt  boots  summer  and  winter 
and  gives  this  explanation:  "It's  better  for 
the  head,  because  the  blood,  owing  to  the 
heat,  is  drawn  down  into  the  feet,  and  the 
thoughts  are  clearer." 

A  woman  is  jocularly  called  Fiodor  Ivano- 
vitch. 

A  farce:  N.,  in  order  to  marry,  greased 
the  bald  patch  on  his  head  with  an  ointment 
which  he  read  of  in  an  advertisement,  and 
suddenly  there  began  to  grow  on  his  head 
pig's  bristles. 

What  does  your  husband  do? — He  takes 
castor  oil. 

A  girl  writes:  "We  shall  live  intolerably 
near  you." 

N.  has  been  for  long  in  love  with  Z.  who 
married  X. ;  two  years  after  the  marriage  Z. 

[107] 


comes  to  N.,  cries,  wishes  to  tell  him  some- 
thing; N.  expects  to  hear  her  complain 
against  her  husband ;  but  it  turns  out  that  Z. 
has  come  to  te'll  of  her  love  for  K. 

N.  a  well  known  lawyer  in  Moscow;  Z., 
who  like  N.  was  born  in  Taganrog,  comes 
to  Moscow  and  goes  to  see  the  celebrity;  he 
is  received  warmly,  but  he  remembers  the 
school  to  which  they  both  went,  remembers 
how  N.  looked  in  his  uniform,  becomes 
agitated  by  envy,  sees  that  N.'s  flat  is  in  bad 
taste,  that  N.  himself  talks  a  great  deal ;  and 
he  leaves  disenchanted  by  envy  and  by  the 
meanness  which  before  he  did  not  even 
suspect  was  in  him. 

The  title  of  a  play :    The  Bat, 

Everything  which  the  old  cannot  enjoy  is 
forbidden  or  considered  wrong. 

When  he  was  getting  on  in  years,  he  mar- 
ried a  very  young  girl,  and  so  she  faded  and 
withered  away  with  him. 

All  his  life  he  wrote  about  capitalism  and 
[108] 


millions,  and  he  had  never  had  any  money, 

A  young  lady  fell  in  love  with  a  handsome 
constable. 

N.  was  a  very  good,  fashionable  tailor; 
but  he  was  spoiled  and  ruined  by  trifles;  at 
one  time  he  made  an  overcoat  without 
pockets,  at  another  a  collar  which  was  much 
too  high. 

A  farce :  Agent  oi  freight  transport  com- 
pany and  of  fire  insurance  company. 

Any  one  can  write  a  play  which  might  be 
produced. 

A  country  house.  Winter.  N.,  ill,  sits 
in  his  room.  In  the  evening  there  suddenly 
arrives  from  the  railway  station  a  stranger 
Z.,  a  young  girl,  who  introduces  herself  and 
says  that  she  has  come  to  look  after  the  in- 
valid. He  is  perplexed,  frightened,  he  re- 
fuses; then  Z.  says  that  at  any  rate  she  will 
stay  the  night.  A  day  passes,  two,  and  she 
goes  on  living  there.  She  has  an  unbearable 
temper,  she  poisons  one's  existence. 
[109] 


A  private  room  in  a  restaurant.  A  rich 
man  Z.,  tying  his  napkin  round  his  neck, 
touching  the  sturgeon  with  his  fork:  "At 
least  I'll  have  a  snack  before  I  die" — and  he 
has  been  saying  this  for  a  long  time,  daily. 

By  his  remarks  on  Strindberg  and  litera- 
ture generally  L.  L.  Tolstoi  reminds  one  very 
much  of  Madam  Loukhmav.  ^ 

Diedlov,  when  he  speaks  of  the  Deputy 
Governor  or  the  Governor,  becomes  a  roman- 
ticist, remembering  "The  Arrival  of  the 
Deputy  Governor"  in  the  book  A  Hundred 
Russian  Writers, 

A  play:  the  Bean  of  Life. 

A  vet.  belongs  to  the  stallion  class  of 
people. 

Consultation., 

The  sun  shines  and  in  my  soul  is  darkness. 

iL.  L.  Tolstoi  was  Leo  Nicolaievitch'a  ion,  Madame 
Loukhmav  a  tenth  rate  woman  writer. 

[no] 


In  S.  I  made  the  acquaintance  of  the  bar- 
rister Z. — a  sort  of  Nika,  The  Fair.  .  .  He 
has  several  children;  with  all  of  them  he  is 
magisterial,  gentle,  kind,  not  a  single  rude 
word;  I  soon  learn  that  he  has  another  fam- 
ily. Then  he  invites  me  to  his  daughter's 
wedding;  he  prays,  makes  a  genuflection, 
and  says:  "I  still  preserve  religious  feeling;  I 
am  a  believer."  And  when  in  his  presence 
people  speak  of  education,  of  women,  he  has 
a  naive  expression,  exactly  as  if  he  did  not 
understand.  When  he  makes  a  speech  in 
Court,  his  face  looks  as  if  he  were  praying. 

''Mammy,  don't  show  yourself  to  the 
guests,  you  are  very  fat." 

Love*?  In  love?  Never!  I  am  a  Gov- 
ernment clerk. 

He  knows  little,  even  as  a  babe  who  has 
not  yet  come  out  of  his  mother's  womb. 

From  childhood  until  extreme  old  age  N. 
has  had  a  passion  for  spying. 

He  uses  clever  words,  that's  all — phi- 
losophy .  .  .  equator  .  .  .  (for  a  play). 

[Ill] 


The  stars  have  gone  out  long  ago,  but  they 
still  shine  for  the  crowd. 

As  soon  as  he  became  a  scholar,  he  began 
to  expect  honors. 

He  was  a  prompter,  but  got  disgusted  and 
and  gave  it  up ;  for  about  fifteen  years  he  did 
not  go  to  the  theatre ;  then  he  went  and  saw  a 
play,  cried  with  emotion,  felt  sad,  and,  when 
his  wife  asked  him  on  his  return  how  he 
liked  the  theatre,  he  answered:  "I  do  not 
like  it." 

The  parlormaid  Nadya  fell  in  love  with 
an  exterminator  of  bugs  and  black  beetles. 

A  Councillor  of  State;  it  came  out  after 
his  death  that,  in  order  to  earn  a  rouble,  he 
was  employed  at  the  theatre  to  bark  like  a 
dog;  he  was  poor. 

You  must  have  decent,  well-dressed  chil- 
dren, and  your  children  too  must  have  a  nice 
house  and  children,  and  their  children  again 
children  and  nice  houses;  and  what  is  it  all 
for*? — ^The  devil  knows. 
[112] 


Perkaturin. 

Every  day  he  forces  himself  to  vomit— for 
the  sake  of  his  health,  on  the  advice  of  a 
friend. 

A  Government  official  began  to  live  an 
original  life;  a  very  tall  chimney  on  his 
house,  green  trousers,  blue  waistcoat,  a  dyed 
dog,  dinner  at  midnight;  after  a  week  he 
gave  it  up. 

Success  has  already  given  that  man  a  lick 
with  its  tongue. 

In  the  bill  presented  by  the  hotel-keeper 
was  among  other  things :  "Bugs — fifteen  ko- 
pecks."    Explanation. 

"N.  has  fallen  into  poverty." — "What? 
I  can't  hear." — "I  say  N.  has  fallen  into 
poverty." — "What  exactly  do  you  say*? 
I  can't  make  out.  What  N.?"— "The 
N.  who  married  Z."— "Well,  what  of  it?" 
— "I  say  we  ought  to  help  him." — "Eh? 
What  him?  Why  help?  What  do  you 
mean?" — and  so  on. 

[113] 


How  pleasant  to  sit  at  home,  when  the 
rain  is  drumming  on  the  roof,  and  to  feel 
that  there  are  no  heavy  dull  guests  coming  to 
one's  house. 

N.  always  even  after  five  glasses  of  wine, 
takes  valerian  drops. 

He  lives  with  a  parlormaid  who  respect- 
fully calls  him  Your  Honor. 

I  rented  a  country  house  for  the  summer; 
the  owner,  a  very  fat  old  lady,  lived  in  the 
lodge,  I  in  the  great  house ;  her  husband  was 
dead  and  so  were  all  her  children,  she  was 
left  alone,  very  fat,  the  estate  sold  for  debt, 
her  furniture  old  and  in  good  taste;  all  day 
long  she  reads  letters  which  her  husband  and 
son  had  written  to  her.  Yet  she  is  an  opti- 
mist. When  some  one  fell  ill  in  my  house, 
she  smiled  and  said  again  and  again:  "My 
dear,  God  will  help." 

N.  and  Z.  are  school  friends,  each  seven- 
teen or  eighteen  years  old;  and  suddenly  N. 
learns  that  Z.  is  with  child  by  N.'s  father. 

[1141 


The  priezt  came  .  .  .  zaint  .  .  .  praize 
to  thee,  O  Lord. 

What  empty  words  these  discussions  about 
the  rights  of  women!  If  a  dog  writes  a 
work  of  talent,  they  will  even  accept  the  dog. 

Haemorrhage :  "It's  an  abscess  that's  just 
burst  inside  you  .  .  .  it's  all  right,  have  some 
more  vodka." 

The  intelligentsia  are  good  for  nothing,  be- 
cause they  drink  a  lot  of  tea,  talk  a  lot  in 
stuffy  rooms,  with  empty  bottles. 

When  she  was  young,  she  ran  away  with  a 
doctor,  a  Jew,  and  had  a  daughter  by  him; 
now  she  hates  her  past,  hates  the  red-haired 
daughter,  and  the  father  still  loves  her  as 
well  as  the  daughter,  and  walks  under  her 
window,  chubby  and  handsome. 

He  picked  his  teeth  and  put  the  toothpick 
back  into  the  glass. 

The  husband  and  wife  could  not  sleep; 

[115] 


they  began  to  discuss  how  bad  literature  had 
become  and  how  nice  it  would  be  to  publish  a 
magazine:  the  idea  carried  them  away;  they 
lay  awake  silent  for  awhile.  "Shall  we  ask 
Boborykin  to  write*?"  he  asked.  "Certainly, 
do  ask  him."  At  five  in  the  morning  he 
starts  for  his  work  at  the  depot ;  she  sees  him 
off  walking  in  the  snow  to  the  gate,  shuts  the 
gate  after  him.  .  .  .  "And  shall  we  ask  Pota- 
penko^"  he  asks,  already  outside  the  gate. 

When  he  learnt  that  his  father  had  been 
raised  to  the  nobility  he  began  to  sign  him- 
self Alexis. 

Teacher :  "  The  collision  of  a  train  with 
human  victims'  .  .  .  that  is  wrong  ...  it 
ought  to  be  'the  collision  of  a  train  that  re- 
sulted in  human  victims'  ...  for  the  cause 
of  the  people  on  the  line." 

Title  of  play:     Golden  Rain. 

There  is  not  a  single  criterion  which  can 
serve  as  the  measure  of  the  non-existent,  of 
the  non-human. 

[116] 


A  patriot:  "And  do  you  know  that  our 
Russian  macaroni  is  better  than  the  Italian*? 
I'll  prove  it  to  you.  Once  at  Nice  they 
brought  me  sturgeon — do  you  know,  I  nearly 
cried."  And  the  patriot  did  not  see  that  he 
was  only  gastronomically  patriotic. 

A  grumbler:  "But  is  turkey  food?  Is 
caviare  food?" 

A  very  sensible,  clever  young  woman; 
when  she  was  bathing,  he  noticed  that  she 
had  a  narrow  pelvis  and  pitifully  thin  hips — 
and  he  got  to  hate  her. 

A  clock.  Yegor  the  locksmith's  clock  at 
one  time  loses  and  at  another  gains  exactly 
as  if  to  spite  him;  deliberately  it  is  now  at 
twelve  and  then  quite  suddenly  at  eight. 
It  does  it  out  of  animosity  as  though  the 
devil  were  in  it.  The  locksmith  tries  to  find 
out  the  cause,  and  once  he  plunges  it  in  holy 
water. 

Formerly  the  heroes  in  novels  and  stories 
(e.  g.  Petchorin,  Onyeguin)  were  twenty 
years  old,  but  now  one  cannot  have  a  hero 

[117] 


under  thirty  to  thirty-five  years.     The  same 
will  soon  happen  with  heroines. 

N.  is  the  son  of  a  famous  father;  he  is  very 
nice,  but,  whatever  he  does,  every  one  says: 
"That  is  very  well,  but  it  is  nothing  to  the 
father."  Once  he  gave  a  recitation  at  an 
evening  party;  all  the  performers  had  a 
success,  but  of  him  they  said :  "That  is  very 
well,  but  still  it  is  nothing  to  the  father." 
He  went  home  and  got  into  bed  and,  look- 
ing at  his  father's  portrait,  shook  his  fist  at 
him. 

We  fret  ourselves  to  reform  life,  in  order 
that  posterity  may  be  happy,  and  posterity 
will  say  as  usual :  "In  the  past  it  used  to  be 
better,  the  present  is  worse  than  the  past." 

My  motto:     I  don't  want  anything. 

When  a  decent  working-man  takes  him- 
self and  his  work  critically,  people  call  him 
grumbler,  idler,  bore;  but  when  an  idle 
scoundrel  shouts  that  it  is  necessary  to  work, 
he  is  applauded. 

["8] 


When  a  woman  destroys  things  like  a  man, 
people  think  it  natural  and  everybody 
understands  it;  but  when  like  a  man,  she 
wishes  or  tries  to  create,  people  think  it  un- 
natural and  cannot  reconcile  themselves  to  it. 

When  I  married,  I  became  an  old  woman. 

He  looked  down  on  the  world  from  the 
height  of  his  baseness. 

"Your  fiancee  is  very  pretty."  "To  me 
all  women  are  alike." 

He  dreamt  of  winning  three  hundred 
thousand  in  lottery,  twice  in  succession,  be- 
cause three  hundred  thousand  would  not  be 
enough  for  him. 

N.,  a  retired  Councillor  of  State,  lives  in 
the  country ;  he  is  sixty-six.  He  is  educated, 
liberal-minded,  reads,  likes  an  argument. 
He  learns  from  his  guests  that  the  new  cor- 
oner Z.  walks  about  with  a  slipper  on  one 
foot  and  a  boot  on  the  other,  and  lives  with 
another  man's  wife.  N.  thinks  all  the  time 
of  Z. ;  he  does  nothing  but  talk  about  him, 

[119] 


how  he  walks  about  in  one  slipper  and  lives 
with  another  man's  wife;  he  talks  of  nothing 
else;  at  last  he  goes  to  sleep  with  his  own 
wife  (he  has  not  slept  with  her  for  the  last 
eight  years),  he  is  agitated  and  the  whole 
time  talks  about  Z.  Finally  he  has  a  stroke, 
his  arm  and  leg  are  paralyzed — and  all  this 
from  agitation  about  Z.  The  doctor  comes. 
With  him  too  N.  talks  about  Z.  The  doctor 
says  that  he  knows  Z.,  that  Z.  now  wears  two 
boots,  his  leg  being  well,  and  that  he  has 
married  the  lady. 

I  hope  that  in  the  next  world  I  shall  be 
able  to  look  back  at  this  life  and  say :  "Those 
were  beautiful  dreams.  .  .  ." 

The  squire  N.,  looking  at  the  undergrad- 
uate and  the  young  girl,  the  children  of  his 
steward  Z.:  "I  am  sure  Z.  steals  from  me, 
lives  grandly  on  stolen  money,  the  under- 
graduate and  the  girl  know  it  or  ought  to 
know  it;  why  then  do  they  look  so  decent*?" 

She  is  fond  of  the  word  "compromise," 
and  often  uses  it;  "I  am  incapable  of  com- 
[120] 


promise.  ..."     "A  board   which  has   the 
shape  of  a  parallelepiped." 

The  hereditary  honorable  citizen  Ozia- 
boushkin  always  tries  to  make  out  that  his 
ancestors  had  the  right  to  the  title  of  Count. 

"He  is  a  perfect  dab  at  it."  ''O,  O,  don't 
use  that  expression;  my  mother  is  very  par- 
ticular." 

I  have  just  married  my  third  husband  .  .  . 
the  name  of  the  first  was  Ivan  Makarivitch 
...  of  the  second  Peter  .  .  .  Peter  ...  I 
have  forgotten." 

The  writer  Gvozdikov  thinks  that  he  is 
very  famous,  that  every  one  knows  him.  He 
arrives  at  S.,  meets  an  officer  who  shakes  his 
hand  for  a  long  time,  looking  with  rapture 
into  his  face.  G.  is  glad,  he  too  shakes 
hands  warmly.  ...  At  last  the  officer:  "And 
how  is  your  orchestra*?  Aren't  you  the  con- 
ductor?' 


[121] 


Morning;  M.'s  mustaches  are  in  curl 
papers. 

And  it  seemed  to  him  that  he  was  highly- 
respected  and  valued  everywhere,  anywhere, 
even  in  railway  buffets,  and  so  he  always  ate 
with  a  smile  on  his  face. 

The  birds  sing,  and  already  it  begins  to 
seem  to  him  that  they  do  not  sing,  but  whine. 

N.,  father  of  a  family,  listens  to  his  son 
reading  aloud  J.  J.  Rousseau  to  the  family, 
and  thinks:  "Well,  at  any  rate,  J.  J.  Rous- 
seau had  no  gold  medal  on  his  breast,  but  I 
have  one." 

N.  has  a  spree  with  his  step-son,  an  under- 
graduate, and  they  go  to  a  brothel.  In  the 
morning  the  undergraduate  is  going  away, 
his  leave  is  up ;  N.  sees  him  off.  The  under- 
graduate reads  him  a  sermon  on  their  bad 
behavior ;  they  quarrel.  N :  "As  your  father, 
I  curse  you." — "And  I  curse  you." 

A  doctor  is  called  in,  but  a  nurse  sent  for. 

[122] 


N.  N.  V.  never  agrees  with  anyone :  "Yes, 
the  ceiling  is  white,  that  can  be  admitted; 
but  white,  as  far  as  is  known,  consists  of  the 
seven  colors  of  the  spectrum,  and  it  is  quite 
possible  that  in  this  case  one  of  the  colors 
is  darker  or  brighter  than  is  necessary  for  the 
production  of  pure  white ;  I  had  rather  think 
a  bit  before  saying  that  the  ceiling  is  white." 

He  holds  himself  exactly  as  though  he 
were  an  icon. 

"Are  you  in  love*?" — "There's  a  little  bit 
of  that  in  it." 

Whatever  happens,  he  says:  "It  is  the 
priests." 

Firzikov. 

N.  dreams  that  he  is  returning  from 
abroad,  and  that  at  Verzhbolovo,  in  spite  of 
his  protests,  they  make  him  pay  duty  on  his 
wife. 

When  that  radical,  having  dined  with  his 
coat  off,  walked  into  his  bedroom  and  I  saw 
[123] 


the  braces  on  his  back,  it  became  clear  to  me 
that  that  radical  is  a  bourgeois,  a  hopeless 
bourgeois. 

Some  one  saw  Z.,  an  unbeliever  and  blas- 
phemer, secretly  praying  in  front  of  the  icon 
in  the  cathedral,  and  they  all  teased  him. 

They  called  the  manager  "four-funneled 
cruiser,''  because  he  had  already  gone 
"through  the  chimney"  (bankrupt)  four 
times. 

He  is  not  stupid,  he  was  at  the  university, 
has  studied  long  and  assiduously,  but  in  writ- 
ing he  makes  gross  mistakes. 

Countess  Nadin's  daughter  gradually 
turns  into  a  housekeeper;  she  is  very  timid, 
and  can  only  say  "No-o,"  "Yes-s,"  and 
her  hands  always  tremble.  Somehow  or 
other  a  Zemstvo  official  wished  to  marry  her; 
he  is  a  widower  and  she  marries  him,  with 
him  too  it  was  "Yes-s,"  "No-o";  she  was 
very  much  afraid  of  her  husband  and  did  not 
love  him;  one  day  he  happened  to  give  a 
loud  cough,  it  gave  her  a  fright,  and  she  died. 
[124] 


Caressing  her  lover:  "My  vulture." 

For  a  play :  If  only  you  would  say  some- 
thing funny.  But  for  twenty  years  we  have 
lived  together  and  you  have  always  talked  of 
serious  things;  I  hate  serious  things. 

A  cook,  with  a  cigarette  in  her  mouth,  lies: 
"I  studied  at  a  high  school  ...  I  know 
what  for  the  earth  is  round." 

"Society  for  finding  and  raising  anchors 
of  steamers  and  barges,"  and  the  Society's 
agent  at  all  functions  without  fail  makes 
a  speech,  a  la  N.,  and  without  fail 
promises. 

Super-mysticism. 

When  I  become  rich,  I  shall  have  a  harem 
in  which  I  shall  keep  fat  naked  women,  with 
their  buttocks  painted  green. 

A  shy  young  man  came  on  a  visit  for  the 
night :  suddenly  a  deaf  old  woman  came  into 
his  room,  carrying  a  cupping-glass,  and  bled 

[125] 


him;  he  thought  that  this  must  be  the  usual 
thing  and  so  did  not  protest;  in  the  morning 
it  turned  out  that  the  old  woman  had  made  a 
mistake. 

Surname:  Verstax. 

The  more  stupid  the  peasant,  the  better 
does  the  horse  understand  him. 


[126] 


THEMES,  THOUGHTS,  NOTES,  AND 
FRAGMENTS. 


.  .  .  How  stupid  and  for  the  most  part  how 
false,  since  if  one  man  seeks  to  devour  an- 
other or  tell  him  something  unpleasant  it 
has  nothing  to  do  with  Granovsky.^ 

I  left  Gregory  Ivanovitch's  feeling  crushed 
and  mortally  offended.  I  was  irritated 
by  smooth  words  and  by  those  who  speak 
them,  and  on  reaching  home  I  meditated 
thus:  some  rail  at  the  world,  others  at  the 
crowd,  that  is  to  say  praise  the  past  and 
blame  the  present;  they  cry  out  that  there 
are  no  ideals  and  so  on,  but  all  this  has  al- 
ready been  said  twenty  or  thirty  years  ago; 
these  are  worn-out  forms  which  have  already 
served  their  time,  and  whoever  repeats  them 
now,  he  too  is  no  longer  young  and  is  him- 
self worn  out.  With  last  year's  foliage 
there  decay  too  those  who  live  in  it.  I 
thought,  we  uncultured,  worn-out  people, 
banal  in  speech,  stereotyped  in  intentions, 
have  grown  quite  mouldy,  and,  while  we  in- 
tellectuals are  rummaging  among  old  rags 

lA  well-known  Radical  professor^  a  Westerner. 

[1291 


and,  according  to  the  old  Russian  custom, 
biting  one  another,  there  is  boiling  up  around 
us  a  life  which  we  neither  know  nor  notice. 
Great  events  will  take  us  unawares,   like 
sleeping  fairies,  and  you  will  see  that  Sid- 
orov,  the  merchant,  and  the  teacher  of  the 
school  at  Yeletz,  who  see  and  know  more 
than  we  do,  will  push  us  far  into  the  back- 
ground, because  they  will  accomplish  more 
than  all  of  us  put  together.     And  I  thought 
that  were  we  now  to  obtain  political  liberty, 
of  which  we  talk  so  much,  while  engaged  in 
biting  one  another,  we  should  not  know  what 
to  do  with  it,  we  should  waste  it  in  accusing 
one  another  in  the  newspapers  of  being  spies 
and  money-grubbers,  we  should  frighten  so- 
ciety with  the  assurance  that  we  have  neither 
men,  nor  science,  nor  literature,  nothing! 
Nothing!     And  to  scare  society  as  we  are 
doing  now,  and  as  we  shall  continue  to  do, 
means  to  deprive  it  of  courage;  it  means 
simply  to  declare  that  we  have  no  social  or 
political  sense  in  us.     And  I  also  thought 
that,  before  the  dawn  of  a  new  life  has  bro- 
ken, we  shall  turn  into  sinister  old  men  and 
women  and  we  shall  be  the  first  who,  in  our 
hatred  of  that  dawn,  will  calumniate  it. 
[130] 


Mother  never  stops  talking  about  pov-' 
erty.  It  is  very  strange.  In  the  first  place, 
it  is  strange  that  we  are  poor,  beg  like  beg- 
gars, and  at  the  same  time  eat  superbly,  live 
in  a  large  house ;  in  the  summer  we  go  to  our 
own  country  house,  and  generally  speaking 
we  do  not  look  like  beggars.  Evidently 
this  is  not  poverty,  but  something  else,  and 
rather  worse.  Secondly,  it  is  strange  that 
for  the  last  ten  years  mother  has  been  spend- 
ing all  her  energy  solely  on  getting  money 
to  pay  interest.  It  seems  to  me  that  were 
mother  to  spend  that  terrible  energy  on 
something  else,  we  could  have  twenty  such 
houses.  Thirdly,  it  seems  to  me  strange 
that  the  hardest  work  in  the  family  is  done 
by  mother,  not  by  me.  To  me  that  is  the 
strangest  thing  of  all,  most  terrible.  She 
has,  as  she  has  just  said,  a  thought  on  her 
brain,  she  begs,  she  humiliates  herself;  our 
debts  grow  daily  and  up  till  now  I  have  not 
done  a  single  thing  to  help  her.  What  can  I 
do*?  I  think  and  think  and  cannot  make  it 
out.  I  only  see  clearly  that  we  are  rushing 
down  an  inclined  plane,  but  to  what,  the 
devil  knows.     They  say  that  poverty  threat- 

[131] 


ens  us  and  that  in  poverty  there  is  disgrace, 
but  that  too  I  cannot  understand,  since  I  was 
never  poor. 

The  spiritual  life  of  these  women  is  as 
gray  and  dull  as  their  faces  and  dresses ;  they 
speak  of  science,  literature,  tendencies,  and 
the  like,  only  because  they  are  the  wives  and 
sisters  of  scholars  and  literary  men;  were 
they  the  wives  and  sisters  of  inspectors  or  of 
dentists,  they  would  speak  with  the  same 
zeal  of  fires  or  teeth.  To  allow  them  to 
speak  of  science,  which  is  foreign  to  them, 
and  to  listen  to  them,  is  to  flatter  their  igno- 
rance. 

Essentially  all  this  is  crude  and  meaning- 
less, and  romantic  love  appears  as  meaning- 
less as  an  avalanche  which  involuntarily 
rolls  down  a  mountain  and  overwhelms  peo- 
ple. But  when  one  listens  to  music,  all  this 
is:  that  some  people  lie  in  their  graves  and 
sleep,  and  that  one  woman  is  alive — gray- 
haired,  she  is  sitting  in  a  box  in  the  theatre, 
quiet  and  majestic,  and  the  avalanche  seems 
no  longer  meaningless,  since  in  nature  every- 
thing has  a  meaning.  And  everything  is 
[132] 


forgiven,  and  it  would  be  strange  not  to  for- 
give. 

Olga  Ivanovna  regarded  old  chairs,  stools, 
sofas,  with  the  same  respectful  tenderness  as 
she  regarded  old  dogs  and  horses,  and  her 
room,  therefore,  was  something  like  an  alms- 
house for  furniture.  Round  the  mirror,  on 
all  tables  and  shelves,  stood  photographs  of 
uninteresting,  half -forgotten  people;  on  the 
walls  hung  pictures  at  which  nobody  ever 
looked;  and  it  was  always  dark  in  the  room, 
because  there  burnt  there  only  one  lamp  with 
a  blue  shade. 

If  you  cry  "Forward,"  you  must  without 
fail  explain  in  which  direction  one  must  go. 
Do  you  not  see  that,  if  without  explaining 
the  direction,  you  fire  off  this  word  simul- 
taneously at  a  monk  and  at  a  revolutionary, 
they  will  proceed  in  precisely  opposite  direc- 
tions? 

It  is  said  in  Holy  Writ :  "Fathers,  do  not 

irritate  your  children,"  even  the  wicked  and 

good-for-nothing  children;  but  the  fathers 

irritate  me,  irritate  me  terribly«    My  con- 

[133I 


temporaries  chime  in  with  them  and  the 
youngsters  follow,  and  every  minute  they 
strike  me  in  the  face  with  their  smooth  words. 

That  the  aunt  suffered  and  did  not  show 
it  gave  him  the  impression  of  a  trick. 

O.  I.  was  in  constant  motion ;  such  women, 
like  bees,  carry  about  a  fertilizing  pollen.  .  .  . 

Don't  marry  a  rich  woman — she  will  drive 
you  out  of  the  house;  don't  marry  a  poor 
woman — you  won't  sleep;  but  marry  the 
freest  freedom,  the  lot  and  life  of  a  Cossack. 
(Ukrainian  saying.) 

AliosHa:  "I  often  hear  people  say:  'Before 
marriage  there  is  romance,  and  then — good- 
bye,  illusion!'     How  heartless  and  coarse 


So  long  as  a  man  likes  the  splashing  of  a 
fish,  he  is  a  poet;  but  when  he  knows  that 
the  splashing  is  nothing  but  the  chase  of  the 
weak  by  the  strong,  he  is  a  thinker;  but  when 
he  does  not  understand  what  sense  there  is 
in  the  chase,  or  what  use  in  the  equilibrium 
[134] 


which  results  from  destruction,  he  is  becom- 
ing silly  and  dull,  as  he  was  when  a  child. 
And  the  more  he  knows  and  thinks,  the  sillier 
he  becomes. 

The  death  of  a  child.,  I  have  no  sooner 
sat  down  in  peace  than — ^bang — fate  lets  fly 
at  me. 

The  she- wolf,  nervous  and  anxious,  fond 
of  her  young,  dragged  away  a  foal  into  her 
winter-shelter,  thinking  him  a  lamb.  She 
knew  that  there  was  a  ewe  there  and  that  the 
ewe  had  young.  While  she  was  dragging 
the  foal  away,  suddenly  some  one  whistled; 
she  was  alarmed  and  dropped  him,  but  he 
followed  her.  They  arrived  at  the  shelter. 
He  began  to  suck  like  the  young  wolves. 
Throughout  the  winter  he  changed  but  little ; 
he  only  grew  thin  and  his  legs  longer,  and 
the  spot  on  his  forehead  turned  into  a 
triangle.  The  she-wolf  was  in  delicate 
health.^ 

They  invited  celebrities  to  these  evening 
parties,  and  it  was  dull  because  there  are  few 

1 A  sketch  of  part  of  the  story  "Whitehead." 

[135] 


people  of  talent  in  Moscow,  and  the  same 
singers  and  reciters  performed  at  all  evening 
parties. 

She  has  not  before  felt  herself  so  free  and 
easy  with  a  man. 

You  wait  until  you  grow  up  and  Fll  teach 
you  declamation. 

It  seemed  to  her  that  at  the  show  many  of 
the  pictures  were  alike. 

There  filed  up  before  you  a  whole  line  of 
laundry-maids. 

Kostya  insisted  that  the  women  had 
robbed  themselves. 

L.  put  himself  in  the  place  of  the  juryman 
and  interpreted  it  thus:  if  it  was  a  case  of 
house-breaking,  then  there  was  no  theft,  be- 
cause the  laundresses  themselves  sold  the 
linen  and  spent  the  money  on  drink;  but  if 
it  was  a  case  of  theft,  then  there  could  have 
been  no  house-breaking. 

[136] 


Fiodor  was  flattered  that  his  brother  had 
found  him  at  the  same  table  with  a  famous 
actor. 

When  Y.  spoke  or  ate,  his  beard  moved 
as  if  he  had  no  teeth  in  his  mouth. 

Ivashin  loved  Nadya  Vishnyevsky  and 
was  afraid  of  his  love.  When  the  butler 
told  him  that  the  old  lady  had  just  gone  out, 
but  the  young  lady  was  at  home,  he  fumbled 
in  his  fur  coat  and  dress-coat  pocket,  found 
his  card,  and  said:  "Right." 

But  it  was  not  all  right.  Driving  from 
his  house  in  the  morning,  to  pay  a  visit,  he 
thought  that  he  was  compelled  to  it  by  con- 
ventions of  society,  which  weighed  heavily 
upon  him.  But  now  it  was  clear  to  him  that 
he  went  to  pay  calls  only  because  somewhere 
far  away  in  the  depths  of  his  soul,  as  under  a 
veil,  there  lay  hidden  a  hope  that  he  would 
see  Nadya.  .  .  .  And  he  suddenly  felt  piti- 
ful, sad,  and  a  little  frightened.  .  .  . 

In  his  soul,  it  seemed  to  him,  it  was  snow- 
ing, and  everything  faded  away.     He  was 
afraid  to  love  Nadya,  because  he  was  too  old 
[137] 


for  her,  thought  his  appearance  unattractive, 
and  did  not  believe  that  young  girls  like 
Nadya  could  love  men  for  their  minds  and 
spiritual  qualities.  Still  there  would  at 
times  rise  in  him  something  like  a  hope. 
But  now,  from  the  moment  when  the  officer's 
spurs  jingled  and  then  died  away,  there  also 
died  away  his  timid  love.  .  .  .  All  was  at 
an  end,  hope  was  impossible.  .  .  .  "Yes, 
now  all  is  finished,"  he  thought,  "I  am  glad, 
very  glad." 

He  imagined  his  wife  to  be  not  Nadya, 
but  always,  for  some  reason,  a  stout  woman 
with  a  large  bosom,  covered  with  Venetian 
lace. 

The  clerks  in  the  office  of  the  Governor  of 
the  island  have  a  drunken  headache.  They 
long  for  a  drink.  They  have  no  money. 
What  is  to  be  done?  One  of  them,  a  con- 
vict who  is  serving  his  time  here  for  forgery, 
devises  a  plan.  He  goes  to  the  church, 
where  a  former  officer,  now  exiled  for  giving 
his  superior  a  box  on  the  ears,  sings  in  the 
choir,   and   says    to  him  panting:   "Here! 

[138] 


There's  a  pardon  come  for  you !  They  have 
got  a  telegram  in  the  office." 

The  late  officer  turns  pale,  trembles,  and 
can  hardly  walk  for  excitement. 

"But  for  such  news  you  ought  to  give 
something  for  a  drink,"  says  the  clerk. 

"Take  all  I  have!     All  I" 

And  he  hands  him  some  five  roubles.  .  .  . 
He  arrives  at  the  office.  The  officer  is  afraid 
that  he  may  die  from  joy  and  presses  his 
hand  to  his  heart. 

"Where  is  the  telegram?" 

"The  bookkeeper  has  put  it  away."  (He 
goes  to  the  bookkeeper.)  General  laughter 
and  an  invitation  to  drink  with  them. 

"How  terrible!" 

After  that  the  officer  was  ill  for  a  week.^ 

Fedya,  the  steward's  brother-in-law,  told 
Ivanov  that  wild-duck  were  feeding  on  the 
other  side  of  the  wood.  He  loaded  his  gun 
with  slugs.  Suddenly  a  wolf  appeared. 
He  fired  and  smashed  both  the  wolf's  hips. 
The  wolf  was  mad  with  pain  and  did  not  see 

1  An  episode  which  Chekhov  heard  during  his  journey- 
in  the  island,  Saghalien. 

[139] 


him.  "What  can  I  do  for  you,  dear?"  He 
thought  and  thought,  and  then  went  home 
and  called  Peter.  .  .  .  Peter  took  a  stick, 
and  with  an  awful  grimace,  began  to  beat 
the  wolf.  .  .  .  He  beat  and  beat  and  beat 
until  it  died.  .  .  .  He  broke  into  a  sweat 
and  went  away,  without  saying  a  single 
word. 

Vera::  "I  do  not  respect  you,  because  you 
married  so  strangely,  because  nothing  came 
of  you.  .  .  .  That  is  why  I  have  secrets 
from  you." 

It  is  unfortunate  that  we  try  to  solve  the 
simplest  questions  cleverly,  and  therefore 
make  them  unusually  complicated.  We 
should  seek  a  simple  solution. 

There  is  no  Monday  which  will  not  give 
its  place  to  Tuesday. 

I  am  happy  and  satisfied,  sister,  but  if  I 
were  born  a  second  time  and  were  asked: 
"Do  you  want  to  marry?"  I  should  answer : 
"No."  "Do  you  want  to  have  money?" 
"No.,  .  /' 

[140] 


Lenstchka  liked  dukes  and  counts  in  nov- 
els, not  ordinary  persons.  She  loved  the 
chapters  in  which  there  is  love,  pure  and 
ideal  not  sensual.  Descriptions  of  nature 
she  did  not  like.  She  preferred  conversa- 
tions to  descriptions.  While  reading  the 
beginning  she  would  glance  impatiently  at 
the  end.  She  did  not  remember  the  names 
of  authors.  She  wrote  with  a  pencil  in  the 
margins:  "Wonderful!"  "Beautiful!"  or 
"Serve  him  right!" 

Lenstehka  sang  'without  opening  her 
mouth. 

Post  coitum :  We  Balderiovs  ,  always  ex- 
celled in  vigor  and  health. 

He  drove  in  a  cab,  and,  as  he  watched  his 
son  walking  away,  thought:  "Perhaps,  he 
belongs  to  the  race  of  men  who  will  no  longer 
trundle  in  scurvy  cabs,  as  I  do,  but  will  fly 
through  the  skies  in  balloons." 

She  is  so  beautiful  that  it  is  even  fright- 
ening; dark  eye-brows. 


[141I 


The  son  says  nothing,  but  the  wife  feels 
him  to  be  an  enemy;  she  feels  that  he  has 
overheard  everything.  .  .  . 

What  a  lot  of  idiots  there  are  among  la- 
dies. People  get  so  used  to  it  that  they  do 
not  notice  it. 

They  often  go  to  the  theatre  and  read  se- 
rious magazines — and  yet  are  spiteful  and 
immoral. 

Nat:  "I  never  have  fits  of  hysterics.  I 
am  not  a  pampered  darling."  ^ 

Nat:  (continually  to  her  sisters):  "O, 
how  ugly  you  have  grown.  O,  how  old  you 
do  look!'' 

To  live  one  must  have  something  to  hang 
on  to.  .  .  .  In  the  provinces  only  the  bodv 
works,  not  the  spirit. 

You  won't  become  a  saint  through  other 
people's  sins. 

^This  and  the  following  few  passages  are  from  the 
rough  draft  of  Chekhov's  play  Three  Sisters. 

[142] 


Koulyguin:  "I  am  a  jolly  fellow,  I  infect 
every  one  with  my  mood.'' 

KouL  Gives  lessons  at  rich  houses. 

Koul.  In  Act  IV  without  mustaches. 

The  wife  implores  the  husband:  "Don't 
get  fat." 

O  if  there  were  a  life  in  which  every  one 
grew  younger  and  more  beautiful. 

Irene :  *Tt  is  hard  to  live  without  a  father, 
without  a  mother." — "And  without  a  hus- 
band."— "Yes,  without  a  husband.  Whom 
could  one  confide  in*?  To  whom  could  one 
complain?  With  -whom  could  one  share 
ones's  joy*?  One  must  love  some  one 
strongly." 

Koulyguin  (to  his  wife)  :  "I  am  so  happy 
to  be  married  to  you,  that  I  consider  it  un- 
gentlemanly  and  improper  to  speak  of  or 
even  mention  a  dowry.  Hush,  don't  say 
anything.  .  .  ." 

[143] 


The  doctor  enjoys  being  at  the  duel. 

It  is  difficult  to  live  without  orderlies. 
You  cannot  make  the  servants  answer  your 
bell. 

The  2nd,  3rd,  and  6th  companies  left  at  4, 
and  we  leave  at  12  sharp.  ^ 

In  the  daytime  conversations  about  the 
loose  manners  of  the  girls  in  secondary 
schools,  in  the  evening  a  lecture  on  degenera- 
tion and  the  decline  of  everything,  and  at 
night,  after  all  this,  one  longs  to  shoot  one- 
self. 

In  the  life  of  our  towns  there  is  no  pessi- 
mism, no  Marxism,  and  no  movements,  but 
there  is  stagnation,  stupidity,  mediocrity. 

He  had  a  thirst  for  life,  but  it  seemed  to 
him  to  mean  that  he  wanted  a  drink — ^and  he 
drank  wine. 

F.  in  the  town-hall:  Serguey  Nik.  in  a 

iHere  the  fragments  from  the  rough  draft  of  Three 
Sisters  end. 

[144] 


plaintive    voice:    "Gentlemen,    where    can 
we  get  the  means'?     Our  town  is  poor." 

To  be  idle  involuntarily  means  to  listen  to 
what  is  being  said,  to  see  what  is  being  done; 
but  he  who  works  and  is  occupied  hears  little 
and  sees  little. 

In  the  skating  rink  he  raced  after  L. ;  he 
wanted  to  overtake  her  and  it  seemed  as  if 
it  were  life  which  he  wanted  to  overtake, 
that  life  which  one  cannot  bring  back  or 
overtake  or  catch,  just  as  one  cannot  catch 
one's  shadow. 

Only  one  thought  reconciled  him  to  the 
doctor:  just  as  he  had  suffered  from  the  doc- 
tor's ignorance,  so  perhaps  some  one  was  suf- 
fering from  his  mistakes. 

But  isn't  it  strange'?  In  the  whole  town 
there  is  not  a  single  musician,  not  a  single  or- 
ator, not  a  prominent  man. 

Honorable  Justice  of  the  Peace,  Honor- 
able Member  of  the  Children's  Shelter— all 
honorable. 

[145] 


L.  studied  and  stu3ied — ^but  people  who 
had  finished  developing  could  not  under- 
stand her,  nor  could  the  young.  Ut  con^ 
secutivum. 

He  is  dark,  with  little  side-whiskers, 
dressed  like  a  dandy,  dark  eyes,  a  warm  bru- 
net.  He  exterminates  bugs,  talks  about  earth- 
quakes and  China.  His  fiancee  has  a  dowry 
of  8,000  roubles;  she  is  very  handsome,  as 
her  aunt  says.  He  is  an  agent  for  a  fire-in- 
surance company,  etc.  "You're  awfully 
pretty,  my  darling,  awfully.  And  8,000  in- 
to the  bargain !  You  are  a  beauty ;  when  I 
looked  at  you  to-day,  a  shiver  ran  down  my 
back." 

He:  Earthquakes  are  caused  by  the  evapor- 
ation of  water. 

Names:     Goose,  Pan,  Oyster. 
"Were  I  abroad,  they  would  give  mc  a 
medal  for  such  a  surname." 

I  can't  be  said  to  be  handsome,  but  I  am 
rather  pretty. 

[146] 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

RENEWALS  ONLY— TEL.  NO.  642^405 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 

Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


^>'11'^^ 


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